


Crossing the Bar

by honorat



Category: Pirates of the Caribbean (Movies)
Genre: Action/Adventure, Gen, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-06-05
Updated: 2017-06-21
Packaged: 2018-04-02 22:36:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 31
Words: 148,318
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4076317
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/honorat/pseuds/honorat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Every once in awhile, I have to write some raving sailing.  Norrington has finally got the Black Pearl trapped.  Jack is bound to do something crazy, but will it be the last thing he does? Set after The Curse of the Black Pearl and before Dead Man's Chest. Canon compliant.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. To Shut the Gates of Mercy

His informant had not lied. Through the grey veil of rain stinging his eyes, Commodore Norrington focused his spyglass on the sheltered harbour. Months of fruitless searching, chasing wild rumours and even wilder truths, had led him to this place. There, enfolded in the verdant arms of the headlands, safe from the storm that pummeled the Royal Navy ships out on the open ocean, rocked a shadowy vessel, her spars slender brush strokes against the restless grey-green water and white froth.   
  
Even without her signature black sails, Norrington recognized the lines of the ship that had haunted his waking hours and not a few of his sleeping ones for far too long.   
  
The  _Black Pearl_.   
  
He had chased her up and down the Caribbean in vain, following reports of pirate activity over the entire Spanish Main. But while his ships had brought in a number of prizes in that frenzy of pirate hunting, this last, greatest threat had remained at large and largely unsighted.   
  
Finally, he had decided that he would never chase down Jack Sparrow. His only recourse was to somehow let the man come to him. He had to chart Sparrow’s known haunts, find the key to that pirate’s mind, learn his habits. Every man eventually fell into a predictable pattern, but Sparrow was less predictable than most. Late into the nights, the commodore had sifted through his information—official dispatches, scraps of wrinkled paper covered with strange stains, neatly-folded letters. The trail had eventually led him here to this secret harbour where the  _Black Pearl_  had been spotted several times.   
  
The  _Dauntless_  and her smaller sister, the brig  _Defender_ , had been lurking out of sight of this harbour for months now. His men had been growing increasingly restless and his ships increasingly spit-and-polished. But at last all that not-so-patient waiting was paying off in Spanish gold. On the wings of a storm, his prey had dashed across the bar into that harbour where Sparrow no doubt planned to wait until the weather cleared. By the time Norrington had his ships in position to block the escape route, the wind had risen severely and the ebb tide was making it impossible for him to pursue the  _Black Pearl_  through the channel. The naval vessels would have to endure the full wrath of the storm out on the open sea. To attempt to make harbour now would be suicidal.  
  
While his ships fought to maintain their positions relative to that harbour mouth, Norrington had the leisure for strategy. He had not had much opportunity to engage Jack Sparrow in pitched battle, so he was not sure whether the pirate would prefer to take on a first rate ship of the line and a more agile pirate-hunter in a fight to the death, or whether he would rather surrender the  _Black Pearl_  than see her destroyed.   
  
Elizabeth Swann and Will Turner had been uncharacteristically close-mouthed about their time spent with the infamous pirate. The one time Norrington had attempted to presume on old friendship and gather any useful intelligence about Sparrow, Elizabeth had brought up her indomitable chin, narrowed her dark eyes, and with a North Sea chill in her haughty tone, informed him, “That is unworthy of you, James.”  
  
So he had nothing to go on but stories—rumours picked up by his agents in notorious pirate ports, garbled accounts from shipmasters who’d run afoul of that pestilential black ship—and the few encounters his ships had managed with the elusive pirate.  
  
He knew Sparrow preferred not to fight. With the fastest ship in the Caribbean, Norrington grudgingly admitted, he had not been forced to do more than snarl a few shots with his stern chasers as he wheeled his ship onto the wind and left his adversaries in his wake. But now they had the sparrow caged, trapped, imprisoned in this harbour. When the wind finally stood down and the tide turned, the  _Dauntless_  and the  _Defender_  would cross that bar and turn all their immense firepower against Jack Sparrow’s beautiful ship. He hoped the pirate would be a sensible man and surrender. However, limited experience did not lead him to expect common sense from that maniac. When Norrington’s ships pinned the  _Black Pearl_  up against that shoreline, the commodore very much feared she would turn like a tiger brought to bay, and the combat would become very ugly before its inevitable conclusion.  
  
* * * * *  
  
Mr. Gibbs was grumblingly reflecting to himself that Anamaria never drew the short straw for watches during foul weather. Let the day or night be clear as an infant’s conscience, and it was “take your worthless hide off to the racks, Gibbs,” and that infuriating woman would settle herself on the  _Pearl_ ’s sunny or starry deck, watching the dolphins frolic beside the ship, putting the occasional mental thumbscrew on a green hand, or lashing the lot of them with that cat o’nine tails she called her tongue, and in general enjoying herself mightily. But let the black clouds boil up on the horizon and the rain come down like the influenza and the pestilential torrents run down one’s neck like rats, and the ship be pitching like to tip them all off into the drink, and it was “your watch, Mr. Gibbs! I’m going belowdecks.”   
  
There was something unnatural about it. He wouldn’t put it past the little harpy to be practicing a spot of magic on the side. He wondered if the captain would listen to a word he said if he complained. Hunched under the scant shelter provided by the companionway, Gibbs took a hasty pull at his flask. Women! He also wouldn’t put it past her to water the rum. She was always grousing about a boatload of drunken pirates.   
  
Jack was a madman to keep her on as mate. But wasn’t calling Jack crazy entirely redundant? He’d known the man was daft from the day they’d met. Hadn’t stopped Gibbs then, and wasn’t stopping him now. Worth hanging around just to see what would happen next. Never a dull day around the captain. Gibbs took another swallow for insurance. Man needed a little internal heat on a bloody miserable day like this.   
  
A call from high up the mainmast brought his attention back to the ship and his duty.   
  
“Sail ho!”  
  
Now there was a poor sod with even worse luck than Gibbs’, stuck up there in this frightful weather keeping the real watch. Hunching his shoulders against the deluge, Gibbs staggered out on the pitching deck. Probably only some poor merchant trying to make port before the storm swamped it. But it was too late to enter this harbour, that was for sure.   
  
“Can ye identify her!” he shouted through the  _Pearl_ ’s vociferous creaks and groans as she consigned the weather to perdition.   
  
“Two of ‘em,” the faint voice floated back down through the wind’s equally profane shrieks in the rigging. “A real monster of a ship and a brig. Both under reefed canvas. Can’t make out their colours in this soup.”  
  
“What headings?” Gibbs hollered hoarsely. 

“Coming in from the southwest—around the headland,” the wretched lookout managed through his coughing.  
  
Two ships. Gibbs did not like the sound of that. No, he did not like it at all.   
  
“Good eye, lad!” he called. “Keep watching. I’ll inform the captain.” And informing the captain would give him a moment out of these thrice-blasted elements.  
  
When he pounded on the cabin door, he heard Jack’s careless, “’S open.” It always made him grateful to have made it out of the Navy alive. Jack could skin a man down to his bare bones with words, but he never looked down on his crew like they were animals.   
  
He opened the door on a familiar sight. The dark mahogany, richly-carved, glowed in the flickering light of lanterns and candles. Jack was relaxed in an ornate, over-stuffed, high-backed chair, with his boots kicked up on the table top, looking gaudily piratical except for the fact that he was reading a decrepit, rat-chewed tome Gibbs recognized as part of the plunder from the sack of Balenbouche. Gibbs had never known a pirate who looted books with the same greed he pilfered gold. He didn’t know how the man could stand to read the way the  _Pearl_  was wallowing about in the storm swells, but Jack never seemed to note how his ship rolled.  
  
Anamaria, the underhanded little weasel, was warm and dry and practicing her writing at the other end of the table, her tongue clamped between her teeth, her brow wrinkled in the ferocious scowl she usually reserved for incompetent lubbers who’d fouled the  _Pearl_ ’s lines. Every time the  _Pearl_  gave an especially violent twitch, she’d cuss the air blue. As usual, she’d unconsciously decorated her brown face with various black smudges. Another of the captain’s mad starts—teaching that fisherman’s wench to read and write. As though she weren’t uppity enough as it was.  
  
“What is it, Mr. Gibbs?” the captain waved expansively.   
  
“Sails, sir,” Gibbs reported tersely. “Two of ‘em from the southwest around the headlands. I don’t like the smell of this at all.”  
  
Anamaria looked up at this, her eyes gone even darker and more intent. Her forgotten quill bled a puddle of ink on the creamy paper in the middle of a word.  
  
“I see,” Captain Sparrow said, his tone still leisurely, but his eyes, too, had gone hard and calculating. “Well then, I suppose I’d best hop up top and take a look, eh?”  
  
“If you would, sir,” Gibbs agreed heartily. “It’d ease my mind a bit.”  
  
Jack bounced to his feet in that way that always made Gibbs feel about a hundred years old and achy in his bones, shrugged into his jacket, crammed his hat on his head—lopsided this time—the angle of Jack Sparrow’s hat was always an indicator of just how tense the man was, Gibbs had discovered—and joined his quartermaster at the door. “Lead on, Mr. Gibbs,” Jack invited.  
  
Bracing himself against the drill of raindrops that met his undefended face when the door swung open, Gibbs reluctantly headed back out into the vile weather. Jack followed him, as usual annoyingly impervious to the worst the elements could throw at him. Anamaria brought up the rear, refusing to be left out of any incipient action.   
  
At the base of the mainmast, Gibbs shouted up at the lookout, “Any changes, lad?”  
  
“Bad news, sir,” came the reply. “Them there ships are Royal Navy, and one of ‘em’s totin’ no less 'n a hunnert guns!”  
  
* * * * *  
  
The instant Captain Jack Sparrow heard the report from the lookout that one of the ships slipping out of the shadow of the island was a first rate Navy man o’war, he recognized the ambush.  
  
While from a purely aesthetic standpoint, he could admire Commodore Norrington’s masterful check and mate in this deadly game they played, from every other angle, the situation was intolerable. He knew what Norrington expected. Jack would be forced to remain in this harbour like a fish in a net until the weather cleared enough for either the  _Black Pearl_  or the Navy ships to dare the bar at its mouth. Either way, the  _Pearl_  would find the  _Dauntless_  and her deadly curtain of fire barring the only escape route. The second, faster ship complicated matters further, decreasing Jack’s options to the singularly unappealing.   
  
For the first time, Jack Sparrow was having to consider whether he would surrender his ship to the Royal Navy. His other choice was to invite the destruction of his ship and crew by returning fire and doing as much damage to two Navy warships as he could before the  _Pearl_  was scuppered. Either option made him heartsick in a way he’d thought he’d forgotten.   
  
They had, Jack gauged, several hours before the tide began its reverse and Norrington might consider it worth the risk to cross the bar in such heavy weather. There was a brief, golden moment now for him to make his decision. And plenty of time to worry whether it had been the right one.   
  
Without a word, he turned and headed for the bow of the  _Black Pearl_ , leaving Gibbs and Anamaria behind, staring at each other in sober surmise at his unprecedented silence.  
  
Jack needed to talk to his ship.

* * * * *  
  
TBC


	2. To Fill the Mouth of Deep Defiance Up

Anamaria watched as Captain Sparrow made his way along the plunging decks as though he were glued to them.  In calm weather, and especially on land, the captain walked like he was five sheets to the wind, but when the seas rolled high and heavy, an uncanny stillness flowed over him.  Everyone else fought the storm, but Jack became it—or had been it all along and was only now returned to his rightful element.  He was trailing one hand along the ship’s railing. 

She grinned at the familiar gesture.  When he’d first got the _Black Pearl_ back, Jack had not been able to take his hands off her, as though without the evidence of his fingers, he could not believe his eyes or his ears that she was really there and his.  As though, if he just once let her slip through his fingers, someone would separate them again. He’d walk entirely around her deck rather than let her loose in order to cross it. Even yet, he never took her wheel without a caress of the silken wood and that luminous look of a bridegroom coming to his bride.  The grin left her face as she considered what Jack must be thinking now.

Her fists clenched, needing to be shedding some Navy blood more than anything, but in the absence of that delightful option, she needed to be doing something.  She whirled on Gibbs, spoiling for a fight, any fight, but that scabrous dog had fled back to his watch, his sense of self-preservation second only to Jack’s. 

Through the pelt of rain, Jack was becoming an indistinct shadow up by the bowsprit.  Then he disappeared entirely.  He would be crawling out on that pitching spar, Anamaria knew, slipping down between the _Black Pearl’_ s windblown wings and lying there communing with his ship.  She’d known him to spend hours there.  She had no idea if the ship ever had anything to say back. 

They did not have time for such indulgence if this ship was to be ready to meet the _Dauntless_ and her companion in combat on the incoming tide.  But it was throwing words to the wind trying to make Jack Sparrow see sense.  Sometimes she was convinced he did not occupy the same world as the rest of them.  She scowled down the deck.  Jack had given no orders to prepare the guns.  She wondered if she should take the initiative.

Anamaria decided she’d climb to the foretop to prevent herself pulling out one of those cannons and blowing a hole in something or someone just to improve her temper.  She’d take a look at those Royal Navy ships herself.  And maybe wish really hard for a hurricane to plunge the two of them right to Davy Jones’ Locker. Bloody bastards threatening to take Jack from his ship or his ship from Jack.  Anamaria enjoyed a good fight on the open sea, but this would be a slaughter—not a sporting engagement at all.  As the wind high on the mast whipped her hair across her face, she clung to that swaying spar and glared across the heaving seas to where the indistinct forms of the warships bobbed on the ocean—but they did not catch fire and explode. 

As her feet hit the deck again, she saw Jack returning slowly from the bow, his face drawn into even finer, sharper lines than usual. His hand, no longer willing to brush lightly along the rail, gripped it with whitened knuckles.

She didn’t know what to say to him. He hadn’t had that look in his eyes since she’d met him before he’d stolen her boat, when he’d told her about losing his ship. 

But he said simply, emotionlessly, “Anamaria, muster the crew, will you, love?” passing by her without pausing and continuing on up to the _Pearl_ ’s helm.

Anamaria turned to see him relieve Gibbs of the watch.  Then Jack took the _Pearl_ ’s wheel, not with his usual caress, but with a fierce, protective hold, pressing up against her, his head bowed so that the rain ran off his hat and over her spokes like tears.

Damn Commodore Norrington and every last one of those Navy dogs to the deepest circle of hell!

Anamaria ran to call up the crew, her voice pitched to drown out the storm and the ship and any dreams of sleeping men.  Everybody jumped when Anamaria bellowed. 

“All hands! All hands on deck! Haul your lazy, good-for-nothing carcasses up here, ye scurvy varmints!”

As the crew straggled to the deck below the helm, the rumours were already spreading.  There’d be bloodshed between the _Black Pearl_ and the Royal Navy before nightfall. They looked belligerent and a few of the more gifted seamen looked worried.

Anamaria wondered what the captain had decided. 

It turned out he hadn’t.  He was going to call for a pirates’ vote.  Jack explained the situation succinctly enough, with none of his usual flamboyance. The number of worried looks increased.

“So what’s in your mind, Cap’n?” Duncan called out.

“The way I see it,” Jack began, “we’ve got at least three choices.”

He’d found a third choice? Anamaria wondered. 

Hands waving at about a quarter of the enthusiasm he normally displayed, Jack demonstrated their options.  “When the storm dies down and the tide turns, Norrington will bring his little boats across that bar. At that point we can blast them with our cannons until we run out of shot or men, while they blast us back with twice the cannon and six times the men.  Then they take the survivors for gallows ornaments and Cay decorations, eh?” He paused, looked down, and stroked a hand along the ship’s wheel. “And the _Pearl_ will be scuppered.” There was an unaccustomed tightness to that statement.

“Don’t sound too partic’lar appealin’, Cap’n,” Duncan called out. “What else y’sellin’?”

“Well, now,” Jack recollected himself.  “Choice number two. We wave the white flag—Do we have a white flag?  Anybody got any clean smalls? No? Well we’ll think of something. Anyways. We wave something white and go peaceable with the ol’ Navy boys.  That’ll mean most of us learn to dance a lot faster’n we might have hoped. Got such a list of crimes it’d take a t’gallant to write ‘em out on.   Yes, Marty. You know I’m talking about you, you blackguard!”

Jack pointed at the short pirate in the front circle of men.  The rest of the crew roared with laughter.  It was far more than the joke deserved, but they needed some sort of release.  Jack laughed too, but the smile didn’t reach his eyes.

He continued earnestly, “But some of you haven’t been pirating long enough to get a record of charges to live down. They’ll likely just do something highly uncomfortable to you, but if you promise to see the error of your ways, you’ll be alive to complain, as it were.  Some of you might even be able to plead coercion—you know—boarded by dastardly pirates, given the choice serve or be shark bait, innocent victims of tragic circumstances—you know the song.  You’d likely get off free, particularly if the Navy is short on hands and needs to press some able-bodied seamen, savvy?”

The men looked at one another.  How many of them could avail themselves of such lies?

“That might be our best option for any sort of survival, men. And the _Pearl_ would have a new career as a Navy prize. Believe me, I’ll be dumping all the swag in Davy Jones before letting those scoundrels board her.  The only gold the Navy’ll be getting out of me, they’ll have to pry out o’ me teeth!”

Yes, either of those options was death for Captain Sparrow, Anamaria reflected.  The British would never let him escape again. 

“That’s gettin’ a bit better, Cap’n,” Duncan called, having appointed himself spokesman. “But ye’re not at the top of yer form there, mate. You said a third option. What’ll that be?”

Jack was silent for a moment, surveying his men.  “Not a good one at all, mates. I’m sorry.”

The crew stared back at him soberly.  They were hearing Jack Sparrow admit to defeat, something not a one of them had ever expected. 

“We’re listenin’,” Duncan said quietly.

“Any port in a storm!” added Cotton’s parrot.

“Aye, it’s a storm, right enough,” Jack mused.  He raised his head a notch and looked out towards the crashing surf in the channel. 

“Option number three—we take the _Pearl_ and cross that bar before the tide turns.” He pointed to the seething tumult at the mouth of their harbour.

“’E’s definitely lost it this time,” someone said reverently.

The murmurs rose above the wail of the wind in the _Black Pearl_ ’s rigging as the men debated the seriousness of their daft captain. Jack held up a hand, and gradually they fell silent again.

“Understand, I’m not offering escape this time. All I’ve got to offer is a chance to die like a man and a pirate rather than a dog and a landlubber.  There’s no skill in this world or the next that’s going to make a bit of difference to those seas. If there’s any chance of our coming out on the other side, it’ll be in the hands of the gods, not mine.  If our luck is in, we might make it through. There’ll still be the _Dauntless_ and her mate out there to blast us to kingdom come, but there’ll also be sea room. We might get a chance to run for it. However, it’s not likely we’ll make it. I’ll not lie to you.”  Jack’s gaze raked his crew.

“Ye’re a lousy merchant, Jack Sparrow,” Duncan said calmly. “Ye need some better goods.”

“One death,” Jack answered with a hollow grin. “That’s all I’ve got for today. You choose. Which one is it to be?  Won’t cost but all you have.”

“What’s your preference, Captain?” Mr. Gibbs finally spoke, watching Jack carefully.

Jack slicked the rain off his face with both hands before answering. “You all know there’s only one outcome for me in this.  So if I were to choose, I’d prefer to go out over that bar rather than meet the rope again.”

He met Gibbs eyes and held them for a second.  The older man nodded and turned away.  Jack motioned for his first mate to dismiss the crew

“Alright, you lot of mangy curs,” Anamaria hollered. “You’ve got time to jaw this over and then we’ll vote.”

“And if any of you comes up with a better plan,” Jack added. “I’d be willing to entertain the notion.”

The crew scattered apart into little knots of serious discussion.  Anamaria scanned them critically.  She couldn’t guess what would be their decision. Well, some of them she could guess.  Mr. Cotton for example.

Mr. Cotton’s parrot hunched on his shoulder, looking disgruntled, shifting from one foot to the other, his blue and gold feathers ruffled out against the rain.  Cotton himself was watching the captain with that fond hero-worship that always made Anamaria want to slap Jack just to balance out his character.  There was never any doubt which way Cotton would vote.  Captain wanted his ship and crew in ol’ Davy Jones’ Locker? Aye, aye, sir! Cotton would follow Jack Sparrow to hell and back. Sure enough.

“Dead men tell no tales!” the parrot offered. 

No, nor dead women, either.  Anamaria shivered as though someone had walked over her grave.  She wished she could come up with a more useful plan than Jack’s.  Something that would keep the _Pearl_ and her captain safe and in one piece. But no inspiration occurred.

Through the entire time, Jack Sparrow stayed motionless at the helm of the _Black Pearl_ , except for occasionally drawing random little patterns in the raindrops on her wood.  He looked up when Duncan pulled apart from the rest of the pirates. 

“We’ve made our decision, Cap’n,” Duncan said gravely.  “We all agree. Ye’ve never steered us wrong in the past, no matter what the ruckus ye’ve mired us in.  And none o’ us is any too fond o’ givin’ the Royal Navy the satisfaction o’ nailin’ our carcasses t’ the wall.  So we’ll be followin’ ye if ye want t’ cross that bar.  It’s a good death, Cap’n Sparrow.  That’s all we’re askin’.”

The incandescence of Jack’s face made Anamaria check to see if the sun had come out in spite of the rain that was trickling irritatingly down her neck.  The men around her grinned, pleased with themselves. 

As if he were his own statue come back to life, Jack re-animated.

“It’s an honour to sail with you gentlemen,” he crowed, all his wild waving returning. “Norrington and his little ships can bob about out where it’s sure to be safe.  Let’s show these Navy dogs what a feckless pack of cowards they are!”

“And what a maggot-brained pack of devil-may-care’s we are!” Anamaria muttered to herself. But she was happy to see Jack re-lit with the sparkle of some impossible caper that would have any sane man on his knees saying his final prayers.

Besides, she had no bloody desire to feel the noose around her own neck.  Jack was right. Better the sea that they loved than the Royal Navy that hated them.  She bared her teeth in a fierce, hungry smile.  _Let’s show them indeed._   Norrington and his men would see a show the likes of which they’d never seen before. 

* * * * *

Bounding down from the quarterdeck, Anamaria set the _Pearl_ ’s crew to scurrying.  The ship had to be made as ready as possible for her ordeal.  Her cargo and guns had to be lashed down so no gyrations of her hull would shift them. Her hatches had to be battened down. And every man had to be sure of his task when her anchors should be weighed and her sails set.

When she was satisfied that she’d stirred the men to an appropriate level of frantic activity, Anamaria returned to the quarterdeck. Joining Jack by the helm, she asked him, with a sarcastic curl to her lip, “So, do I get to die like a man, too?”

Jack turned to her, his mind already out on that bar.  “You’ll take the helm with me, Anamaria?” he asked.

Anamaria was stunned into silence.  In those seas, Jack would need a second set of hands on the _Pearl_ ’s wheel.  She just hadn’t imagined he’d ask her.  Not trusting her voice to answer, she nodded.

Jack grinned at her. “It’s been an adventure, hasn’t it love? They’ll never forget the _Black Pearl_.”

“Aye,” Anamaria managed. “Nor her daft as a loon captain.”

With a faraway look in his eyes, Jack wondered, “Why did you stay on, Anamaria? I’d have given you that ship.” He glanced back at her and smirked. “You could have been your own shipmaster, above the law, and looking forward to being a wrinkled old gray-haired harriden with a thousand grandchildren instead of setting out to be the prettiest pirate to decorate Davy Jones’ Locker, eh?”

There were a number of answers to that question, most of which would be drowning with her.  Anamaria avoided them all. “What? You’re not planning on going down with your ship, Jack Sparrow?”

Jack’s smirk increased. “What, flattery, love?  Ain’t I conceited enough for you?”

She punched half-heartedly at his arm. “Fop!”

“Virago!” he shot back.

Jack looked out over the sea to that horizon that seemed farther away today than it had in years. “No regrets?” he asked her.

Anamaria had so many regrets they’d be here through two more tides.

“You?” she asked.

He was silent a moment, playing thoughtfully with his braided beard with one hand, the other still touching the _Black Pearl_.

Finally he turned to her. “Just one.”

She couldn’t read his expression.

With his swift grace, Jack drew so close that she could see the droplets clinging to his eyelashes and sparkling on his moustache, could see the silver tracery of rain on the angles of his face.  Before she could back up, he took her face in his hands, his fingertips like chips of ice against her flesh.

Anamaria froze and ceased to breathe.  Her startled eyes flew to his.  Jack Sparrow’s eyes. There ought to be an eleventh commandment against a man having eyes like that, she thought wildly.

And then she ceased to think.

She could only feel the touch of his lips on hers.  Feel the death-like chill of them, the rain-wet brush of his beard. And oh, feel the glowing, smoldering embers at the heart of that kiss—as though his flesh were already relinquishing life, but the soul of him burned all the more fiercely with its immortal fire.

Jack’s pulse drummed in his fingertips on her face. She could hear his breath catch and shatter against her lips.  Her own breath seemed to have been stolen away by the wind that lashed around the two of them, tangling their salt-soaked hair together.  Anamaria felt the stinging clamour of Jack’s beads strike her cheek.

From far away, over the hurricane roaring in her ears, she could hear the whistles and catcalls of the _Pearl_ ’s crew.

Then Jack released her slowly, drawing away and leaving only cold behind and the memory of fire. His fingers brushed the rain from her cheeks. His eyes on her were molten.

“Now, I have no regrets,” he said.

The crew waited patiently for Anamaria to slap the captain.  Anamaria always slapped the captain when he got too bold—which was a powerful lot of the time.  “But you make it so irresistible, love!” he’d complain.  Captain might as well get her handprint tattooed on his face, was the general opinion.  He was a braver man than they were.

In a way, a spat between the captain and the first mate would be a relief—restore some semblance of normality to a nightmare situation.

But Anamaria did not slap Jack.  She wanted to throw herself into his arms and bring back the warmth of life into that chill of death.  She wanted to pull out a pistol and shoot the bastard herself and save the sea the trouble.  She wanted to cry for all those lost regrets and all the impossible futures.  She did none of those things. Instead, she just stood there, staring at him.

A small smile teased the corner of his mouth, but he turned to the crew that had been collecting on deck as they completed their tasks.  They were a soggy and bedraggled bunch for men who would be making such a desperate last stand.  Every one of them a good man and a good pirate.

“This is it, men!” he called to them. “They’ll tell this tale from here to Zanzibar!”

The crew cheered wildly. 

But Jack’s face was dead sober when he said softly to them, “Thank you.”

The men looked abashed, and a few of them shuffled self-consciously.

“Ye’re welcome, Cap’n,” Duncan said for them all.

“Very well then.” Jack nodded, meeting each man’s eyes once.  Then he waved his arms in energetic circles. “All hands aloft to loose canvas!”

The decks cleared like magic.

Jack set his hands on the _Black Pearl_ ’s wheel again and drew a deep breath. Still standing by the captain but trying to ignore him, Anamaria took hold of the ship as well.  Instantly, the _Pearl_ was alive under her hands—different from when Anamaria was alone at the helm.  As though when Jack was touching the _Black Pearl_ , she was something more than a ship. A frisson almost of fear crept up Anamaria’s spine.

* * * * *

“Commodore.”  The lookout Norrington had posted was calling down out of the fighting top.  “Something’s up over on the _Black Pearl_ , sir.  I can’t quite make out what.

So, Sparrow was having a Plan, was he?  Norrington decided the situation merited his personal attention.  Trying to match strategies with Jack Sparrow was like trying to predict the wind.  One needed every last scrap of available information.  The storm had borne the _Dauntless_ far enough from the harbour mouth that he could not see his quarry from on deck. He’d have to join his man aloft.  The corner of the commodore’s mouth quirked.  He didn’t often have a legitimate excuse to indulge himself in the pleasure of a jaunt into the rigging.  With alacrity he scrambled up.  Reaching the narrow platform, he raised his glass and trained it on the sleek, deadly form of his adversary’s ship. 

The rough tossing of the _Dauntless_ kept interfering with his focus, but in between his ship’s slide into the troughs of the heavy seas, Norrington received the impression that the _Black Pearl’_ s rigging swarmed with pirates, that in fact, they were moving out along each of her yards—as though Sparrow had ordered not only storm canvas unfurled, but every last shred of sail she carried.  Surely not, Norrington stared in disbelief.  But even as he thought it, he saw the sable sails come tumbling down, whipping in the wind as the tiny figures desperately fought to sheet them home.  Even Jack Sparrow couldn’t be that daft, could he?  The only possible reason for spreading canvas in this gale was that Sparrow had decided to run that bar.  And such a course was madness, suicidal even.  The _Black Pearl_ was a bonny ship, but those cannonading seas across that bar were rising more than fifty feet.  One such broadside and she would turn turtle and be pounded under.

Regaining the deck of his ship, Norrington tried to imagine himself inside Sparrow’s head but failed miserably.  What did that Bedlamite imagine he could do?

And yet, Norrington considered, this was the man with the temerity to pilot the _Dauntless_ through that impossible ship’s graveyard to Isla de Muerta.  And this was also the man who had backed over the battlements of Fort Charles.  Whether the timing had been intentional or not, Jack Sparrow had definitely planned to make that jump into the crushing seas below, risking the rocks for his freedom. 

The commodore came to a decision.  If the impossible happened, and the _Black Pearl_ came across that bar, the _Dauntless_ and the _Defender_ would be waiting for her.  His men would question his own sanity, but Norrington was never going to underestimate that pirate again.  This time, he swore, if Sparrow would not surrender, he would take that beautiful ship apart plank by plank and send her to the bottom of the sea, if it took every pound of shot he possessed and every ounce of powder, too.

TBC

 


	3. No Requiem on the Wild Waves

Joshamee Gibbs squinted up at the helm where Jack was refusing to let go. How a man the size of the captain could manage to cluck and fuss like a broody hen over a ship the size of the _Pearl_ had always amused Gibbs.  You’d think she was a soft, fuzzy little chick instead of a 42-gun, hulking, proud, snarling queen of a battleship.  Every ship had its own personality, and the _Black Pearl_ was as mercurial and stubborn and sly as her captain, imperiously demanding to boot, with a malicious streak a yard wide.  Gibbs wouldn’t have wanted to serve on her under any other command than Jack’s. 

To Jack, she was altogether lovely. For him, the _Black Pearl_ sailed as sweetly as the most compliant of ships.

Just now, however, the ship was bucking and twisting at her moorings like an untamed beast in the angry seas.  She would need every ounce of that fighting spirit once her sails filled and Jack set her at that bar. 

Gibbs was not surprised that Jack Sparrow was going to get them all killed.  He was only surprised that it had taken this long.  The man had a positive knack for sailing too close to the wind for Gibbs’ comfort.  It was always canvas nigh ripping to ribbons and leeward rails under with Captain Sparrow.  Jack had the vocabulary of a Cambridge don combined with that of a Newgate gallows bird in a handful of different languages, but it didn’t include the word “prudence” anywhere at all.  Not for the first time, Gibbs wondered why he was still with the _Black Pearl_.  This kind of madness couldn’t be good for his health.  

“Anamaria, set double-reefed courses, and full topsails and t’gallants,” Jack was ordering.  With such heavy seas running, the captain would have no desire to ship his lower sails full of seawater for as long as it took them to shred.  Best raise them so they’d clear the water breaking over the _Pearl_ ’s decks.  But the ship would need as much of her upper canvas as possible to counteract the force of those waves.

Anamaria dropped down the poop steps hands on the rails, feet not touching, and headed forward along the maindeck shouting, “Move it, you pack of worthless scum!  Time to work like sailors—if y’can remember how!”

Her job was to make sure the captain’s orders got carried out.  If Jack was king of this ship, his first mate was his executioner.  Her voice harried the crew, letting them know in no uncertain terms that since the dawn of time, no lower, more illegitimate human beings had ever trod a ship’s deck.

Gibbs was glad to be out of her line of fire.  But before he could join the larboard watch, Jack detained him. 

“Mr. Gibbs.  I’ve got a task for you.”

The captain had that far-away, calculating look in his eyes that let Gibbs know he was seeing possibilities hours ahead.

“I need you take some men and prepare one of our spare spars with a span of cable.  Then make fast a hawser forward to the lee bow.  Carry the other end aft to windward and bend it to the span on that spar.”

Bloody hell.  Jack was serious.  Gibbs reminded himself that any way you looked at it, they weren’t likely to make it out of that passage alive, but the cold-blooded preparations for the most appalling circumstances, made his liver turn.  For the first time it really began to hit him.  Jack Sparrow fully expected the _Black Pearl_ to go down.  He just wasn’t planning on letting her do it without a fight. 

It was all very well to cheer and agree to the grand gesture in the heat of defiance.  But the cold reality was waiting for them out on that bar.

“Mr. Gibbs?” Jack prompted.

There was no point in raising any objections.  The alternatives were even worse.  Gibbs met his captain’s blank, hard gaze.  He shrugged. “Aye, sir.  I’ll see that it’s done.”

He turned and made his way slowly down the stairs.  He had too many years to go leaping down like Anamaria, the show-off.  Snagging a ship’s boy, he sent the kid after the hawser while he and a few of the men scrounged up a spar.  Jip was one of Jack’s strays, Gibbs grinned to himself.  Captain had showed up after a few day’s carouse in Brazil with a new collection of head lice, one less tooth, a curious wooden idol, and the kid. 

He wasn’t what one would expect to pick up in Brazil—hair as white-gold as a Caribbean beach and eyes as blue as the rare Paraiba tourmalines Jack had stashed in that wood carving.  He looked like a cherub in a cathedral mosaic.  He also looked as if a stiff breeze would blow him right off the _Pearl._   Both appearances were entirely deceptive.  The little rotter proved to have more vices than any five of Jack’s men and a mouth like a sewer.  Jack found him amusing.  So Jip stayed on as one of the ship’s boys.  Mostly he was a plague.  But he was a bright little pestilence.  Knew his job, and mostly did it in between raising hell.  And as far as Jip was concerned, Captain Sparrow was God.  Which amused Jack too.  Gibbs snorted.

As Gibbs and Jip set to rigging the contraption Jack had ordered, the watches were climbing the ratlines up the masts fifty, seventy feet in the air, scrambling out along the windward side of the yards, slithering on the treacherous footropes.  Hands grasping the jackstays, feet clinging to the swaying, jumping footropes, they struggled to cast off the gaskets and loose the sails. 

The slender hull, pitching and rolling simultaneously, acted as a fulcrum for the wild pivots of the masts, dipping the yards gracefully towards the sea, whipsawing the men who clung with every flexing inch of their bodies—teeth and bellies and knees.  Gibbs had seen men fall in just such circumstances, disappearing into the ocean as though they had never been there at all, silent and swift and irrevocable.

Over the racket of the gale in the rigging, Anamaria was hollering at them to get the damn gaskets off before nightfall.  Did she have to climb up there herself to cast off a few bloody lines and then knock their useless arses into the sea?

You could scrape barnacles off the hull with that woman’s tongue, Gibbs decided.  He had seen men do far more impossible things under the scourge of Anamaria’s voice than he’d ever seen done under the threat of Navy floggings.

The cry came down, first from the mainmast, then almost simultaneously from fore and mizzen masts, “Main and tops’l gaskets away!” 

Shortly there followed, “To’ga’nt gaskets away!”

Then all hell broke loose as the sails shook free and the wind sunk its teeth into the unyeilding stiffness and weight of the number one canvas Jack had ordered bent on when he’d first expected foul weather.  Part of the fore topsail flicked back and caught one of the men on the chest.  With only his knees braced on the yard, he lost his balance, teetering back as the footrope swayed out from under him.  The man beside him reached out and grabbed his arm, pulling him in to the yard, a casual act of salvation, barely acknowledged by the two of them.

A fusillade of rapid orders from the captain and mate orchestrated the complicated choreography.

“Slack away clewlines and buntlines!”

“Haul away main and tops’l sheets!”

“Slack away jib down hauls! Haul away all jibs!”

“Belay mizzen tack!”

Out on the great yards, in that high, cold, open air hell, the men began their battle with the wet, flogging sails.  The main topsail, alone, was a third of a ton of thunderclapping, death-dealing, rock-hard canvas.  Their job was to sheet it home before the sail blew itself to rags or someone was killed.  The _Black Pearl_ was not making their task any easer as she rolled heavily in the surf, her masts etching dark, frightening arcs against the glowering seas. 

Just when they would almost have it, gusts of wind of wind would rip the lines out of their bleeding fingers, or the ship would roll precariously and the sail would break free, and the whole heart-breaking task of getting it under control had to begin again.

The wind swallowed their oaths and shouts at the ship, the driving rain, a clumsy or slow comrade—whatever let that damn bitch of a sail break loose again.

A sharp cry broke from the foremast topsail yard.  Through the driving rain, Gibbs saw with heart-stopping clarity the violent snap of one of the clewlines.  Free of restraint, the great cable whipped through the air, catching one of the men—Gibbs swore under his breath when he saw it was Duncan—across his chest and arm, shredding his ragged garments and opening a long gash through which white bone glared for an instant before blood gushed in a spray to leeward, spattering the sail now attempting to flog itself to tatters and raining down on the deck. At that the man was lucky that cable hadn’t taken off his head.

By some miracle, the blow did not knock Duncan off the yard, but he clung there, eyes closed, unmoving.  His crewmates had their own battle to fight with the sail that was threatening to self-destruct and to batter them all off the plunging foot ropes. They had no hands to spare to help him.  With an agonizing effort, Duncan inched his way to the rigging within his reach.  He made it onto the windward foremast shroud, but after one attempt to descend in which his arms nearly gave way and one foot slipped, the injured man sagged against the cables.  He’d never make it down in this wild sea, and it was only a matter of time before he lost his grip.

“Anamaria!” Jack’s voice surmounted the storm. “Get that man on deck!  Move!”

“Aye sir!” she snapped back, already bolting for the shrouds, scarcely seeming to touch the wildly pitching lines.  Sometimes Gibbs forgot how uncanny that woman was walking the wind.  Then she was behind the struggling crewman, interposing her body between him and the devouring sea, her ferocious tones reaching across the entire ship.

“You comin’ down, Duncan? Or you plannin’ on spendin’ the night?”

“Just enjoyin’ the fuckin’ view, mate!” Duncan gasped.

But he started his descent again, hugging the windward side of the shroud, spurred on by Anamaria’s curses.  Occasionally he faltered, swaying back against the small figure holding him to the lines.  Anamaria hung on fiercely, supporting the extra weight on straining arms. 

“Duncan, you bloody great ox! You weigh a ton!” she screamed at him. “Climb like a sailor, not a lubber, you whoreson dog!”

Duncan retaliated with his own curses, calling into question all of Anamaria’s ancestry and personal habits in a spate of furious creativity that impressed Gibbs.  The man had better hope the first mate wasn’t paying too close attention. However, the anger fueled his painful creep downward.

As the two neared the deck, Gibbs and two other men who had been hauling lines, rushed to help the injured man off the rigging.  Duncan was two shades paler than his normal sun-baked bronze, and he was sweating even in the chill rain.  His breath was coming in short sharp gasps.  Leaning heavily on Gibbs and Anamaria, he slumped, dark head bowed, no energy left to do anything more than bleed on the deck.

He needed stitched up, but there was no time for patchwork. 

“In my cabin,” Jack ordered, joining them.

Duncan looked up, his mouth opened to protest. The captain forestalled him.

 “I’ll not be sending a man belowdecks for this passage, but you’ll never hang onto the lines when the _Pearl_ ’s decks are awash.  So don’t be an idiot, Duncan.” Captain Sparrow jerked his head in the direction of the door.  “Cabin. Now! That’s an order!”

Gibbs and Anamaria hustled Duncan off to the captain’s cabin over his objections that they were needed, and he could make his own way.  Since Gibbs was having to grab the lifelines himself as the decks angled and swooped, he didn’t pay his staggering burden the least mind.  Together, he and Anamaria hauled Duncan into the cabin.

“Now lie down before you fall down,” Gibbs suggested.

 Anamaria didn’t bother to suggest.  She just shoved the off-balance man into Jack’s bed.

“No!” Duncan gasped. “I’m a bloody soddin’ mess!”

“There’ve been far worse things in that bed, mister!” Anamaria informed him. “Now are you goin’ to stay quiet like a sensible man or do I have to tie you there myself?”

She glared him into cowering submission. It helped that the man was thoroughly exhausted.

“There are plenty of sheets there, Duncan,” she informed him. “Bandage yourself up if you can.  Or at least hold some pressure on that.” 

“I thought Cap’n said we’re just goin’ to Davy Jones anyway.” Duncan gave the ghost of a laugh.

“Maybe he did,” Anamaria snapped. “But he’s Captain Jack Sparrow and this is the bloody stupidest thing we’ve ever done, so maybe we won’t.”

“Aye, that’s about the right of it.” Duncan grimaced.

“Besides,” said Anamaria over her shoulder as she turned to go. “I didn’t lug your carcass down off that yard so’s you could bleed to death.”

“Aye, aye, sir.” Duncan saluted sloppily with his good arm.  “Permission to drown if the ship goes down?”

“I think we’ve all got that,” she said shortly.

“Take care o’ yerself, lad,” Gibbs added gruffly. “Ye did good work out there.”

And they left him.  The ship was running out of time. 

Out on deck, Jack had taken over the direction of the crew in Anamaria’s absence.  The last recalcitrant sail had been sheeted home, the stay sails had been set, and the men came swinging down to the decks for the heavy, sweating work of hoisting the upper topsail and topgallant yards. Tired beyond exhaustion, wet to the core, hands bleeding, clinging to railings and lines, they asked only for orders.

Captain Jack Sparrow’s voice, rising calmly above the storm, gathered them all in, renewing their courage, brushing fear from too young faces, touching sea-hardened eyes with greater determination.  All the flash and foolery was buried in fifty fathoms of water.  His steady presence was a reassurance.  He’d see them through the coming war with the bar as he had always done before.  The captain was a man who refused to lose; they would ride on his back, win with his fire.

Oh, thought Mr. Gibbs, this was why he was still with the _Black Pearl_.  This was the captain the mutiny and those ten years of enduring had made.  This was a man who now understood that in the intertwined mortality of men and ships, it is the men who count—what they have in them,  what they can drag out from deep inside in the final extremity.  Jack had sculpted this fractious, ill-sorted bunch of men into a united crew who now worked desperately and suffered uncomplainingly to save the ship.

He joined the rest of the crew on the halyards, hauling until his arm muscles almost quit.

* * * * *

Through the biting rain, Jack Sparrow watched the fragile figures of his men who would risk their lives to follow his orders, so in love with freedom themselves that they were willing to let him lead them to the bottom of the sea rather than raise the white flag to Norrington.  He had asked that the last dregs of their courage and resolve be spent here, and behold their splendid response.  Amidst the clash of the elements, the bombardment of the seas, and the driving rain making every surface treacherous, they had battled the tons of wet canvas and won, setting sails in weather where only reefing made sense.  Out in the open sea, the _Dauntless_ and the _Defender_ prowled.  At this moment, Jack knew that he loved these men. That he would do everything in his power to bring them through this fatal passage, but that if he failed, as seemed likely, he was content to die beside them.  

He felt the _Black Pearl_ quivering under his hands, as though she were as eager as he to go down fighting rather than surrender. 

“Anamaria, I’m going to be needing your help, love,” Jack called.  Swiftly and soberly she joined him. 

Tightening his hands on his ship’s wheel, he glanced at Anamaria, took a deep breath and shouted the final command: “Let go and haul to run free!”

For once, Anamaria did not follow this with a spate of orders.  The men knew what to do.  For the first time they performed their tasks in silence.  The only sounds were those of ship and sea and storm.  The anchors were catted and fished. The sails were trimmed for the close reach that would take her into the mouth of the harbour.  And then the ship came fully to life.

The wind resounded like a great pipe organ in the tall cathedral of the _Black Pearl_ ’s sails, thundering through her fretwork of standing and running rigging, vibrating her deckplates, and singing along the bones and sinews of her crew.  It was a sound to thrill the soul and tighten the throat and sting the eyes—the sound of a great ship taking flight in catastrophic splendour amidst the fanfare of the elements.  As her canvas stretched taut, humming in the wind, the _Black Pearl_ lifted her head out of the seas, faced the channel she must clear or die trying, and shot forward.  Her crew gave a shout of triumph.  Jack smiled grimly. The sea might win this day, but the Royal Navy would lose its prey one way or the other.

* * * * *

From his vantage point back as close to the harbour mouth as he dared in this wretched weather, the commodore had not taken his eyes off the _Black Pearl_ for an instant.  So he saw her begin her run at the bar.  Even though he had admitted the possibility that Sparrow might do something this hair-brained and desperate, the sight still shocked him.

“He’s going to do it!” Norrington exclaimed, almost to himself.  “The bloody fool is actually going to do it!”

“Do what, sir?” Lieutenant Gillette asked at his shoulder.

“Cross that bar,” Norrington answered in disbelief.

“Impossible,” Gillette objected.  “That ship would have no chance in those seas.”

“Of course it is impossible.  You know it.  I know it.  I’m sure that madman Sparrow knows it.  But it is, nevertheless, what he is doing.  See for yourself.”

He handed Gillette the glass.  After a moment watching, the lieutenant handed it back.

“Idiot,” he said, without any heat.  Both of them remembered the last time Gillette had made that remark.

“Precisely,” Norrington agreed.  “Which is why I have ordered the _Dauntless_ and the _Defender_ prepared for battle or pursuit.  Jack Sparrow seems to break the laws of nature and probability with the same aplomb as he breaks the laws of England.  But this time, if the sea does not take him, I shall.”  His voice was grim.

Gillette bared his teeth in a shark’s grin. “Good.”

Nevertheless, James Norrington, who loved ships with a pure, clear love that transcended his duty, could not repress a shudder as he watched Sparrow force his slender, dark lady with her shivering black-winged sails into the gaping maw of that channel.  Norrington would have let himself be hanged before he committed such an atrocity to his own ship.  His heart went out to the gallant, ill-fated vessel.  The seas, breaking across the bar and holding the Navy ships at bay in deeper water, already rose above the _Black Pearl_ ’s bowsprit.

Norrington could tell that Sparrow was attempting to gauge his approach based on the frequency of the highest seas, but such an attempt was of limited effect.  The chaos in that confluence of opposing forces was too great, the timing between the series of breakers too short.  As the _Pearl_ leapt forward into the channel, the seas crashed across her bow, shuddering her nearly to a halt.  Her entire decks were awash.  Only her masts showed above water.

The men of the Royal Navy were true seamen.  Even though this was a vessel they were sworn to destroy, watching her futile struggle against the power of the sea was not a pleasant experience.  They could almost feel the slam of tons of water on that fragile hull.  She might be a pirate ship, but it was still a blood-chilling sight to watch that lovely vessel go down.

She hadn’t gone down yet.  Her bow rose defiantly again and again out of the foaming waves, throwing off the water in white cascades.  The wash of water boiled and tumbled down the sweep of deck like river rapids, burying her crew up to their waists, sometimes their chests, each shipped wave mowing them down like cannon fire. But the pirates always appeared again, still clinging to her rigging as the ship rolled heavily from side to side.  Steadily, the dark ship clawed her way deeper into that deadly channel.

Suddenly, the _Black Pearl_  heeled sharply to starboard.

“Mary, Mother of God!” an able seaman exclaimed in horror.

Pulling his gaze from the beleaguered vessel, Norrington lowered the glass and scanned the increasingly violent seas for the cause of the outburst.  A sense of fate swept over him.  The brave ship was doomed.  Three huge seas, stacked up by the gale winds against the ebb tide and the built-up bar, were heading directly for her starboard side.  The first one was surely 40 feet from trough to crest.  And each one towered higher than the preceding one.  Sparrow’s bid to throw the _Pearl_ ’s head into that threat was a valiant one, but he would never manage it in time. 

As the first sea struck her, the _Black Pearl_ shied heavily to port.  The volley of spray from the ton of water crashing over her windward rail shot a hundred feet up and out to leeward.  Even though her crew had to be completely swallowed by the wash of water, Norrington could see through his glass that Sparrow was already fighting to swing her bow back to starboard.  Nevertheless, when the second sea slammed into that black hull, the commodore was sure the effort had been insufficient.  The blow laid over her masts nearly 65 degrees to port. Every moment he expected to see the ship continue her collapse.  However, in what surely was a miracle, the _Black Pearl_ dragged herself agonizingly upright, her masts still stepped, and braced for the final strike.

Jack Sparrow might not be that “best pirate” Lieutenant Groves claimed he was, but he was captain of the most incredible ship. 

Nevertheless, the sea was not finished with its efforts to devour her alive.  She was now hopelessly broadside to the third and greatest sea.  Double in size from the first one, this snarling monster blotted out the commodore’s view of all but her top masts.  Its crest was a solid mass of sea-foam, curling and breaking and licking like ice cold flames. 

There was something terrible about standing by and watching the death of a ship and the frail human fragments aboard her, no matter that hanging was all they were destined for. 

As that angel of death wave swept over the _Black Pearl_ with inexorable power, it picked her up as though she were a bit of flotsam and dashed her down on her side.  Norrington saw her masts hit the water. And then, through the malevolent froth of grey and green and white, he saw her rudder protrude.  The legendary _Black Pearl_ , terror of the Caribbean, had gone down.

Commodore Norrington bowed his head.  This was how it was to end.  The inimical waves had been judge and executioner.  Her captain had chosen to lead his ship and his crew to the bottom of the sea, to cross a far more solemn bar than this merely mortal one, rather than give the Royal Navy the chance to scuttle her or chain her as a prize—rather than accept the loss of his freedom one more time.

The _Black Pearl_ was gone, and Jack Sparrow with her.  It seemed appropriate somehow, that the two of them should be together in the end. 

TBC

 


	4. To Sail Rejoicing in the Flood of Death

Captain Jack Sparrow did not waver in his determination as the third cross-sea raced towards the starboard side of the _Black Pearl_.  “This is it, my lady,” he murmured to his ship still gallantly trying to recover from the last sea that had nearly laid her over on her beam ends. The glassy silver-green wall of water rose above the _Pearl’_ s highest decks, above her courses even, reaching hungrily for her topsail yards. Its surface swirled with pearlescent streaks and veins of quicksilver, like rare marble. The top twenty feet of it broke high above his head into a foaming white cataract, the roar of its approach drowning out all other sounds of men and wind and hull and canvas.

He had never seen anything so sublime.  This was why he had chosen to cross the bar.  If death would come, this was how it should be. Not the shameful, painful, land-bound ugliness of hanging and rotting like an animal.  This sheer indifferent beauty, this implacable power, this dark mysterious violence—this he could embrace.

His men had fled, fleet-footed up her shrouds, striving to outrace that mass of water, but Jack stayed at the helm of the _Black Pearl._   He could sense Anamaria beside him, fierce and indomitable.

Jack held his ship, gentling her with his touch. “It’ll be all right, love.  I won’t let you go.”  He had never been so aware of her, every singing line, every inch of shuddering canvas, every curving carved embellishment, every raking mast and swaying yard, every moaning plank of her hull, every living heart that beat in her crew.   He had never been so aware of the sea, of its weight and majesty and inexorable strength.  The _Pearl_ hung there, terrifyingly alive, in the moment before that apocalyptic wave swept her up its slope and avalanched over her, driving her down again into the lightless abyss of its trough.

And then they were no longer separate—no longer man and sea and ship.  Jack felt along his own flesh the weight of water striking the fragile hull.  The groans and cries and cracks of the _Black Pearl_ resonated in his own bones as she surrendered to the wave that crushed him against her helm.  His ship’s pain sliced through him like shards of glass. Then all was chaos—thundering, pounding water followed by cold darkness and unbearable, surging pressure. 

Still Captain Jack Sparrow did not let the _Black Pearl_ go alone into the sea.

Together.

Forever.

* * * * *

Anamaria glared at the onrushing wave as though the heat of her gaze could boil it off into ineffectual steam.  Her arms ached, trembling from the attempt to throw the _Pearl_ ’s bow to starboard, an attempt that had finally failed. 

Time caught its breath, eerily still.  As the _Pearl’_ s masts carved deliberate arcs into the seething sea, Anamaria saw each of her boys as vividly as though she could touch them, aloft as high into the rigging as they could scramble—candle flames of life, so easily snuffed out.  They were as hard and as quick and as skilled as she could make them.  They needed to be, in order to survive this harsh element and even harsher life.  And so she drove them and herself mercilessly. This ship had drunk deep of the blood of each of them, binding them to her.  Good men, all of them.  The _Black Pearl_ deserved the best.  Jack Sparrow deserved the best. Anamaria’s eyes stung—from the wind or the salt in the air. 

She could sense Jack beside her like a fire that burned her. The wall of seething, snarling death hung over them, an executioner’s blade, mocking their puny mortal struggles to survive its overwhelming might. 

She did not want this to be the last thing she ever saw.  And so she looked instead at Jack.  She had never seen anything so sublime.  Drenched in rain and salt spray, his hair whipping like black flames in the wind, his ornaments snapping like sparks, he stared into that onrushing cavern of water with an incomprehensible, ardent serenity in his dark eyes, even though his knuckles gleamed white bone as he shared the fight with the _Pearl’_ s rudder against the force of the sea.  She could see his lips move as he spoke to his ship, but she could not hear his voice above the thunder of that wave.

Almost she could hear the ship whisper back.  Jack Sparrow was the _Black_ _Pearl_ ’s human half. Anamaria knew that Jack would always belong first to his ship.  She could no longer imagine life without the two of them together.

And so she held on as long as she could to the helm when that cold hell of a sea made good its threat and engulfed the ship.  Then the shock of water, hitting her like a solid fist, stole her futile curses, tore at her body like hateful hands, and ripped her from her grip on the wheel and her place at Jack’s side.

Anamaria despaired for the first time that day.  She did not want to die alone. Frantically she grabbed for anything that would give her purchase as she was pummeled down the slope of the deck.  Just before she was swept into the open sea, one hand brushed rough cable, and she seized the line as though it were life itself.  In the end it would not matter.  But Anamaria felt gratitude as the darkness beat down over them all.  The _Black Pearl_ had not abandoned her. 

* * * * *

Joshamee Gibbs knew the minute his luck ran out.  This was the end—exactly as Jack Sparrow had foreseen.  The ship was going over.  Her port rail was dropping away, her decks were sloping at a steeper and steeper pitch.  He and the seven crewmembers responsible for the spar and hawser clung to the _Pearl_ ’s windward rail as it rose high into the air on the shoulders of that doomsday sea. 

Gibbs tried to remember some childhood prayer adequate for this extremity, but the only litany that came unhelpfully to his mind was the phrase, “Dust thou art, and to dust thou shalt return.”  Which made no sense at all, since he was about to drown a very wet, dust-free death. 

Not for the first time, Gibbs wondered why he was fated to continue returning to an element that was forever trying to kill him.  This time it looked fair to be succeeding. 

He felt the _Black Pearl_ pulsing under his grip like a living creature.  As she began to go over, her decks writhing under his feet, he could hear her crying out in the shriek of her timbers.  Somehow it seemed a blasphemy that such a ship should fight so hard to live and yet go down.

Then the force of the water struck him, beating at his hands and head, lashing his back like the cut of a whip, clawing at his body like a beast of prey.  Air and light were gone.  His hands failed him, and he lost his hold on the _Pearl_.  He felt himself sliding down the vertical decks of the ship, being swept by a cataract of roaring water into the depths of the sea.  He tried to call out but salt water stopped his mouth.

There was no one left to answer his call anyway.

* * * * *

When that third wave came charging towards the _Black Pearl_ like a raging dragon, her crew had not needed orders to send them scurrying up her ratlines as high as they could go.  They clung now, dark human beads on delicate rope chains, as the ship began to heel fatally far over. 

Not one of them faced the sight of that brave ship surrendering helplessly to the sea without a chill of horror that was only partially related to his own survival.

For an instant, through the pall of rain, they could still see the captain and first mate and the few men whose duties held them to the decks far below.  Then a wall of white fury broke over the starboard rail. Salt spray from that collision dashed against the crew even to the topgallants. Below now, the only sign of life, the only record that a ship had ever been on that terrible sea, was etched in three black spars thrusting up from the fathomless valleys and gray-green mountains of water. And even those masts were capitulating.

The men rode out that descent, the wind drowning their curses, their prayers, and finally their silence as the _Black_ _Pearl_ laid down her arms into the sea.

* * * * *

The depth and blackness of the sea seemed endless, eternal.  Jack wondered how long he could hold his breath, when he would be forced to surrender and gasp in cold salt water.  His lungs had long since ceased their polite requests for air and were now engaged in active coercive torture.  He needed to breathe.  He could have let go of his ship long ago, could have prolonged the agony by fighting as long as possible to stay on the surface of the sea, but now it was too late.  Either they both came up, or they both went down.  He could feel the grate of bone against his labouring chest like the sear of a branding iron.  Broken ribs.  _Thanks so much, love_.

Just when he had almost given up, the darkness began to recede to a dim gray as the capsized hull of the _Black Pearl_ emerged from under the maelstrom of that lethal sea.  Jack’s head broke through just as his lungs won their argument, and he gasped in great gulps of spray-drenched air, ignoring his ribs’ protest.  As the water drained away and more of her vertical decks reappeared every second, Jack found himself perched on his ship’s helm.  The _Pearl_ lay on her port side at least eighty degrees, beam on to the wind and seas, waves slamming over her hull like cannon fire, spray hailing from her starboard rail like grapeshot.  Her masts would not remain stepped for much longer.  He could see her yards hanging askew or detached, the sails like limp, dark bodies lying in the water, many ripped to shreds, their upper portions flogging in the wind, the remainder becalmed by the ship’s hull. 

Pulling himself back from that serene edge of resignation to death, Jack reached deep inside for the energy and courage to resume fighting.  This situation was as much as he could have hoped for.  They were still afloat.  He had a few precious moments to resurrect his ship before another such sea sent her to the bottom.  Even now her breached hatches were swallowing an impossible amount of water.  Soon the weight of all that water would overcome her buoyancy and drag her down. 

How many of his crew had survived? He was chillingly aware that he was alone at the helm.

“Anamaria!” he called out over the roar of the storm.

* * * * *

Anamaria clung desperately to the line as the seas broke around her sometimes allowing her space for a breath before submerging her in their dark embrace.  With every ounce of determination she possessed, she began the hand over hand climb up the deck of the _Pearl._   They were about to die, every last one of them, but she was not going to give up without a fight.

The hand that surfaced beside her startled her.  Even though she knew she hadn’t made it far enough to be safe, she quickly hitched the rope around her body and let go with one hand.  As the water rose to her chin, the hand rose too. Before it could sink away, Anamaria seized the crewman’s wrist.  His fingers snapped around her arm in a panicked grip. Her shoulder nearly tore out as the sea dropped out from under them, leaving her supporting herself and some fourteen stone of man and waterlogged clothing. The rope bit into her torso and other hand.  She gasped in pain and swore colourfully.

Her soggy burden coughed and choked.  “Anamaria!”

Even though her eyes were clenched shut with the strain, Anamaria recognized that voice.

“Mr. Gibbs,” she hissed through gritted teeth. “Couldn’t you just stay on the ship, you bloody idiot?”

She didn’t know how much longer she could hold him. Occasionally, a rising sea would relieve some of his weight, but she was beginning to see flashes of lightening behind her eyes, and she could feel the fatigue in her muscles beginning to overwhelm her grip.  She was never going to be able to use that shoulder again, that was a sure bet.

“Lass, ye can’t hang on for us both!” Gibbs was yelling from somewhere far away.

Summoning up enough air, she tried to shout back at him.  It came out as an angry whisper.  “Don’t you dare let go, you rotten scoundrel!”

“Don’t know how long I can hold on!” Gibbs choked. The breaking crest of a wave shipped over the _Pearl’_ s hull and rushed over them, tearing at their fragile bond.

Then, above the mayhem of the storm and the sinking ship rang out the voice of Captain Sparrow calling her name.  No matter her battered, half-drowned exhaustion, the captain’s call was an irresistible stimulus.  Anamaria tightened her grip, opened her eyes and managed an actual audible, if half-mast, bellow. “Aye, sir! I’m here! A little help, if you please?”

She’d never seen a more beautiful sight than Jack Sparrow clambering down the poop deck rail as though it were a ladder.  He’d lost his hat and he looked like a drowned rat, but he was alive and carrying a second line.  Giving it a couple of wraps around the rail, he tossed the other end towards Gibbs.

With his free hand, Gibbs managed to clutch the rope.  Then he dropped back into the water.  Anamaria nearly cried with relief as the weight left her and Jack towed the man to the rail where he could attach himself with the tenacity of a barnacle.  She could tell something was wrong with Jack, because the effort seemed almost too much for him, but they were alive. And that was enough for now.

By this time, two other crewmen had managed to get a hold on Anamaria’s line, hauling her quickly up the _Pearl_ ’s sloping deck.  Finally, she was able to let go, although her fingers refused to straighten.  Huddling on the stair railing of the poop deck, riding out the wild swoops of the ship, Anamaria rubbed her shoulder.  She was amazed to find it wasn’t dislocated.  She couldn’t use that arm at the moment, but she could worry about that later. 

Gibbs’ face appeared as he climbed up to her level. He joined her on her perch, followed by Jack.

“Ye all right, lass?” Gibbs asked.

She wasn’t used to him caring what she felt like.  “I’ll be fine,” she answered shortly. 

He set a large, rough hand on her good shoulder. “Thank ye,” he said simply.

Anamaria shrugged. “I’d’ve done it for anyone.”

“But since it was me,” Gibbs countered. “I’m thankin’ ye for not just droppin’ me back in the drink.” He grinned at her. 

“Aye, well, that sea must’ve addled m’brains,” she muttered. 

“That was a big one all right,” Gibbs reflected calmly.  “I’ve decided to retire from this profession, if ye want t’know.”

Suddenly, absurdly, they were laughing. Jack looked like laughing hurt him even more than the rescue operation.  But it was such a relief to be alive for another moment.

“All right, mates!” Jack was back to captaining.  “Let’s get this lady on her feet.  Gibbs, you up to collecting your crew and getting that spar launched?”

“Aye, sir!” And Gibbs scrambled on up the poop deck rails in search of his men.

“Anamaria, we’ll need all her sail forward. See to her hatches. And get those pumps manned.”

“Aye, sir!”  There’d be time to collapse later, if they survived this capsize.

Anamaria didn’t know whether Gibb’s task would make any difference.  She didn’t know if her own orders would be sufficient.  Jack was always a gambler, but if he lost this bet and the ship didn’t pay off, the only choice would be to chop away her topgallant masts and shrouds—main, mizzen and fore. Relieved of their windage, the ship might right herself. Anamaria was surprised Jack hadn’t made provision for this.

“Captain, do you want me to send the men out on her masts with the axes?” she reminded him.

“No.” His reply was short and sharp.

“What do you mean, no?  If she doesn’t right herself soon, she’ll go down!” Anamaria exclaimed incredulously. 

“We’ve already decided that, Anamaria.  She can’t fly without her topgallants, and I won’t cut off her wings.” Jack reached out his hand to his ship’s deck in that impossibly tender gesture he reserved for the _Black Pearl_.  “If she can’t pull her masts up, I’ll let her go,” he continued quietly.  “It’s what she would want.  The Royal Navy is not taking this ship or these men.”

Anamaria compressed her lips over any retort she might have made.  If that was the way of it, no protest of hers would sway Jack Sparrow.  She turned away from him and shinnied up the line onto the ship’s side rail, making her way forward by hanging on to shrouds and running rigging. She was stuck on a boat full of bloody last-stand heroes.  Time to go make a valiant attempt to save this ship of fools

Behind her, she could hear Jack’s voice ringing out fiercely over the explosions of waves and beating canvas, calming and comforting with its familiarity.

“Ladbroc, Tearlach, get aft to the helm if y’ain’t drowned!”

* * * * *

The crew of the _Black Pearl_ were convinced they were about to die, that death was imminent.  The ship was on her side, and she wasn’t coming up again.  The seas crashed over the half-submerged decks and yards of the ship, plucking at their bodies ravenously. Strips of shredded canvas snapped in the wind like whips.  The men clung to the rigging in silent, stunned immobility.

Then the voices rose, like beacons of hope flaring out of the tumult. The captain calling for the first mate. Anamaria’s acknowledgment.  And then Captain Sparrow’s orders, urgent but calm, sounding as if they had a chance.

Anamaria’s familiar bellow drew them like a halyard. “All right, my lads, lay forward and get some head sails on this lady!  Larboard watch, get some men onto those pumps!”

Suddenly they were equally firmly convinced that they would not die this time—even though they knew the situation was dire when Anamaria stood down in violence if not in volume. The string of orders got them moving.  Shaking off the sea’s spell of paralyzing anguish, they began to make their way back to the ship. 

* * * * *

Along with the two men who’d helped haul in Anamaria, Gibbs struggled precariously to where the spar was lashed to the _Pearl_ ’s starboard rail and the remainder of his crew waited enduring the unceasing gout and spout of seas over the hull.  He was grateful to discover all seven of them had somehow managed to stay attached to the ship during that cataclysmic wave. 

“All right, me hearties!” Gibbs tried to project the confidence Jack Sparrow exuded when he ordered something impossible.  “We’ve got a stop-waters to launch.” 

To do so would involve wrestling that thirty-foot long, nearly one foot in diameter chunk of wood over the rail, onto the twisting hull of the ship, without being bucked off into the sea.  Then they’d somehow have to get it in the water to windward without joining it themselves.  Carrying out Jack Sparrow’s outrageous plans was going to kill him someday. Gibbs grimaced. Now he need a plan of his own to make sure that day was not today.

First Gibbs had his men tether themselves to the rail. There wasn’t a chance in hell that they weren’t going to need that precaution.  Then it was time to abandon what protection the ship’s bulwarks provided and venture onto that exposed hull.  Blast, he hated leading by example.

The wind slapped his face, determined to drive him back as he braved that expanse of storm-besieged timber.  Four men crept out beside him, clinging to the grooves in the planking.  The other three released the spar from its bindings.

Masses of breaking crests and rushing foam hammered against the backs of the men balanced on the _Pearl_ ’s heaving side, spewing plumes of spray until they could scarcely breathe.  Every time they could almost stand upright to haul on the spar, the ship would pitch into a trough in a stomach-rolling dive, driving them to their knees. Three times men lost their footing entirely and had to be hauled back up onto the hull with the ropes that bound them to the ship.  All of them suffered repeated collisions with the remorseless wood. The violent abuse bloodied their hands and knees, but they persevered doggedly.

“Heave boys! That’s it!” Gibbs shouted over the uproar.  “Up she goes now.  That’ll do her!  Hang on now or you’re gone altogether!”

Somehow in the turmoil of breaking seas, the wind not easing a knot, hanging onto that topsy-turvy ship, his lads managed to hoist that spar onto the hull.  The three men below scrambled out onto the rocking planks and lent their strength to one final, heart-cracking, sinew-breaking heave that thrust the spar out into the sea.

Throwing themselves to the boards in exhaustion, they clung there shaking in the aftermath of that all-out effort.

Would it be enough?  They would not know until the wind and seas, pressing on her upturned hull, had driven the ship far enough to leeward to stretch the hawser taut.

As they lay there, gasping for breath, Captain Sparrow’s head appeared above the railings.  He disappeared for a moment as a wave broke over the ship, but his face was alight when he reappeared, hauling himself onto the rail, water cascading off of him. 

“Excellent work, my bonnie lads,” he exclaimed, with a flourish of one arm.  “That ought to bring her head to the wind in fine style.”

His collapsed crewmembers revived under the praise, waving back at him.

“Captain!”

Jack’s head whipped about in answer to that call.

Jip, the smallest ship’s boy, came scampering along the _Pearl_ ’s pitching rail as though he were on her level decks in a calm.  “Captain!” he cried.

“You still aboard, whelp?” the captain inquired, grinning at the soaked urchin. 

“He is,” Matelot’s deep voice answered as he laboured along behind. “No thanks t’ himself. I just fished him out—again.”

Capering about in high good humour, heedless of the corkscrew rolls of the _Pearl_ , Jip crowed, “Look what I found, Captain!” He held up a battered dark object that upon closer examination was revealed to be Jack’s hat.

Jack reached for the beloved object. “Thought I’d lost that for good,” he said nearly too softly to be heard. Carefully he set it back on his head.  He reached out and ruffled Jip’s wet curls. “Thanks, scamp. What would I do without you?”

“Well, I, for one, would not have had to risk life and limb twice to get a rope on the little bastard,” Matelot groused.  He shared a look of commiseration with Gibbs. “I’d just pulled him in when he saw that hat floating in the rigging and back into the sea he goes. Never had such a turn!  Blasted kid.”

“And for that, I thank you, as well,” Jack said sincerely.  “You’re a good man, Matelot.”

He turned to Jip, schooling his features to severity. “And as for you, young miscreant. Stay on the ship from now on. Hats can be replaced.  Good men cannot.”

“Aye, sir,” Jip saluted gaily, not at all chastised.  They all could tell the captain was pleased to have his hat back.

“Right.” Jack eyed him suspiciously. The kid was only compliant when he was plotting mischief. “Now make yourself useful.  See if Anamaria can put you to work.”

“Aye, sir,” Jip sighed.  He turned and scurried off the way he’d come.

* * * * *

While Gibbs and his men were labouring to toss the spar overboard, Anamaria was overseeing the most pressing repairs.

“Marty!” she called.  “Lay forward and see how many hatches are breached.  Call the carpenter and see what you can do for ‘em.”

“Securing the hatches, aye.” Marty swung down beside her and began clambering forward through the rigging. 

Marty was a good hand. The next time she looked for him, he and the carpenter were covering the broken hatches temporarily with sail canvas in spite of being under water half the time as the seas continued to break heavily over the ship.

Now that they’d stopped the majority of the water from getting in, it was imperative that they pump out the masses of it already sloshing about below. No doubt the ship had sprung a few seams as well, but there’d be no time to pack in oakum and tar.  They’d just have to pump unceasingly until they made harbour somewhere for repairs.

Anamaria snorted to herself. Here she was planning as if they were not only going to survive this capsize but also going to outmaneuver and outrun two Royal Navy warships.  Jack Sparrow’s daftness must be bloody contagious.

The men from the larboard watch were already toiling away at the pumps on the most exposed part of the main deck.  The waves shipping over the hull were burying them in water up to their waists and necks, so they’d had to lash themselves to the main mast fife rail to avoid getting washed away.  It was work to break hearts and backs on that vertical deck, but they lowered their heads and did not let up.  Water poured out of the _Pearl_ ’s clanging washports, although not nearly fast enough.

Anamaria spoke a word of encouragement as she swung by the men on her way to direct the setting of the foresails should Jack’s crazy plans work.  God, she prayed her boys would live.

* * * * *

Gibbs and his crew had only partially recovered from their exertion when the hawser snapped tight over the _Pearl_ ’s rail. 

“This is it, mates,” Gibbs called.  He shared a glance with the captain whose supple imagination had foreseen this necessity.  The men watched solemnly along with them to see the results of their work.

Painfully slowly the _Black Pearl_ ’s headway was checked.  The pull on her lee bow drew her towards the wind.  Her stern began to fly off in excruciating increments.  As the great ship came head to the wind, the press of the gale and the seas on her hull reduced dramatically and she ceased her leeward course. 

It seemed every man and woman aboard the ship forgot to breathe, waiting to see what the _Pearl_ would do.  With the weight of the wind no longer forcing her over and pinning her down, no longer causing her hull to becalm her sails, would she be able to right herself?  Would her few remaining sails catch enough wind to overcome the tenacious inertia of her tall masts?

A shout rang out as the _Pearl_ ’s decks began almost imperceptibly to level, her yards to come up ever so slightly.  Those crewmembers not manning the pumps leapt into her rigging again to ride out the change in orientation. 

“Hoist the fore topmast staysail,” Jack commanded.  “Get it up there lads! This is our chance. Get her headsails on her.” They needed to pay the ship’s head off to leeward and cast her onto the starboard tack as swiftly as possible in order to get her under way again.

The minute Anamaria could set foot on the _Black Pearl_ ’s decks without tumbling into the sea, she bounded up to the forecastle deck. 

Her orders rang, mighty-voiced over the wind.  “Lay aloft and get that foretopsail set, my beauties! Fast like the devil’s up y’r arse!  Haul up the damn jibs while you’re at it.  Sing out when you’re ready. Jump to it!”

The starboard watch scrambled forward to comply, attempting to reset the sails that had been ripped down by that monster wave. 

“Ladbroc, Tearlach,” Jack added from his position on the poop deck, “when they’ve hoisted the headsails, up helm as hard as you can.  Get her bow to pay off.” 

The storm was still refusing to ease their tasks.  The surviving heavy canvas tore away from them, threatening to flail itself to flinders, making every move arduous.  Braced on the steeply-tilted, rolling decks of the ship, the men hauled on the lines.  They pulled until their callused hands burned, until their backs revolted and their muscles jumped with the strain.

Handspan by bloodied handspan, the sails rose again.

 “Haul away boys,” Anamaria goaded. “Heave the sonofabitch up there!  Two men aft to the sheets!  Now the inner jib—heave and wake the dead!  Go boys!  Don’t let this bastard win!”

When the men had succeeded in hoisting the three jibs and sheeting them home, Anamaria hollered aft, “Ahoy the poop! Up your helm there! Bring her around!  Now! Now!”

“Helm up, aye!” Ladbroc bellowed back.  He and Tearlach spun the ship’s wheel as fast as they could.

For a moment nothing changed.  The crew waited with bated breath for the half-exposed rudder to bite the waves that were beginning to submerge it.

As they fought the staysail into place, the _Black Pearl_ ’s straining jibs and rudder began to catch, pivoting her bow gradually onto the wind, and she began to move forward, coming upright more every minute.

The crew cheered wildly.  She was doing it!  Their dark lady was rising out of the sea once again! 

Suddenly men were dancing on her decks, throwing their arms around each other, slapping one another on the back. Laughter and shouts rang out.

Jip was darting about hugging everyone he could stretch his small arms around, including Anamaria.  He was the only one who ever dared.  The little wretch had never been afraid of her, and he had an even worse vocabulary.  Anamaria found she was happy to hug him back before he went scampering off to throw himself at the captain.

She nearly dropped dead with shock when Gibbs draped an arm around her and gave her a tentative squeeze. He looked uncertain, as though ready to defend himself from an attack.  But Anamaria was so happy she embraced him back. The startled expression on his face was worth it.

Then she found herself in Jack’s arms, his rough beard scratching against her cheek. Although his skin was cold against her face, the water on it held the warmth of tears, not the chill of rain. She could feel his shoulders shake under her hands.

“They’re all here, Ana,” he whispered into her neck. “I checked. Every last man and boy is still aboard and alive. They all made it.”

“Duncan?” she murmured into his hair. 

“Considerably worse for wear. He hit the bulkhead pretty damn hard when she went down, but he’ll survive.”

Anamaria felt her own throat tighten in gratitude. By some miracle they had done it. They had saved the ship and the souls aboard her.  The _Black Pearl_ had saved them all.

* * * * *

No choir had ever sung such music as the sound of the _Black Pearl_ picking up her heels off the wind, going as full sail ahead as she could, a great roaring aloft.  She seized the wind, drinking it in great draughts, plunging forward eagerly.  Nevertheless, the sea had not yet laid down its arms. The shuddering jerk as the ship topped a wave and plunged into the next was like hitting a stone wall.  As the waves washed over her bow, there was little to distinguish her deck from the sea. 

However, battered as she was, one mast crippled, too many of her sails shredded or flailing loose, their lines snapped, too many of her yards hanging a-cock-bill, she faced the storm with her customary, unsubdued courage.  She would stand up to those punishing seas, put her shoulder to the thundering waves, rise up over and over again, shake off the tons of rushing water and fight on.

Jack Sparrow stood again at the helm of his ship, his face raised to the rain and the wind, his eyes closed as he listened to her voice, a song of victory. What a beauty she was, his _Black Pearl_. What a valiant, unconquerable, incredible ship. What an honour to be her captain. What a privilege to be here to see her vanquish this storm this day, to see her pull herself and her crew out of the jaws of death. 

“Thank you, love,” he said softly.

She might have foundered and gone down had the spirit of the sea said the word.  But nothing, not even her most intimate adversary the Ocean itself could fail to grant quarter to such a magnificent vessel.

* * * * *

A shout rang out, and Norrington’s head snapped up.  Disbelieving, he saw Sparrow's ship knifing her way back out of her watery grave, saw the _Black Pearl_ clawing a path out of the savage sea.  One of her topmasts had snapped and half her sails were hanging in shreds, but she was alive.  He watched in awe as she gained her feet, her remaining sails shivering and singing taut in the wind.  That was no ordinary ship, he swore; Jack Sparrow had leashed himself one of Neptune’s daughters.  She arose from the waves, gallant and invincible, shrugging off the attempts of the lesser seas to batter her into submission.  Eagerly she caught at the vicious winds, sinking her teeth into them, lifting herself out of her briny prison as though she might truly fly.

“I don’t believe it,” Lieutenant Gillette muttered beside Norrington.

Norrington shook his head in awe. He didn’t believe it either. “You will never see another ship with that much heart,” he said with conviction. 

And now that she had survived that passage, it was his duty to destroy her.  Reluctantly, he turned to give the orders that would bring the _Dauntless_ within range of the _Black Pearl_ as she completed her crossing of the bar.

“Sir,” Gillette’s voice was quiet, almost inaudible in the howl of wind through the _Dauntless_ ’s rigging.

“Yes, Lieutenant?” Norrington was actually grateful for the delay.

“Perhaps,” the Lieutenant smiled crookedly, “another day’s head start?”

The commodore’s shoulders slumped a little and his rare smile was sad as he answered the lieutenant. “So you feel it, too,” he said. 

“She’s a bonny ship, sir,” Gillette said carefully.

“She is indeed,” Norrington sighed.  “But this ambush represents months of work that we cannot afford to waste for the sake of even so fine a ship as the _Black Pearl_.  Sparrow has used up his day’s grace, and we have our duty.”

“Aye, sir.”

If the sea had this day paid homage to the courage of that ship and released her from certain death, the Royal Navy would have no such mercy.

* * * * *

TBC


	5. Risking All that is Mortal and Unsure

In the excruciating boredom of lying in wait for their quarry, Commodore Norrington and Captain Walton had spent dozens of evenings with their officers in the wardroom of the  _Dauntless_ developing tactics and mapping strategies for every likely and, as Norrington had insisted, every unlikely scenario.  Now they would finally be able to utilize that planning.  As soon as Sparrow’s ship emerged far enough into open water, while she was still reeling from her encounter with the bar, Walton would bring the  _Defender_ across her T and rake her bow with all his fire.  The original plan had been a far more dangerous one, assuming, as it did, that the enemy ship would be fully capable and swift as lightning. 

However, as the matter stood, the Royal Navy would never have a better opportunity to take the _Black Pearl_.  The pirate ship rode low in the pounding seas, hamstrung by the water in her holds, down on her marks like a half-tide rock, staggering under her broken mast and torn sails.  For this one time the _Dauntless_ should easily match pace with the fastest ship in the Caribbean.

But even crippled as she was, the _Black Pearl_ was a foe to give a man pause.  The commodore’s face was grim as he watched the pirate vessel loom up out of the sea, closer and closer.  As dark as fear and deadly sin, as beautiful as night and the heart of a storm.  No wonder ships surrendered to her without a fight.  Battered as she was now, bearing down on the _Defender_ and the _Dauntless_ like an avenging fury, she was a nightmare incarnate. Not for the first time he wondered why a man like Sparrow, who played the fool with such relish and used force with more reluctance than most men Norrington knew, let alone any of the pirates he’d pursued, would choose to sail such a menacing ship.  Even though he knew she could scarcely be a worthy opponent in her current condition, even though he had her outgunned more than two to one, he felt the small hairs on the back of his neck rising in irrational fear. There was something uncanny about Jack Sparrow’s ship. 

Since Norrington had the weather gauge on the _Pearl,_ he’d given Sparrow no choice but to run this gauntlet—first the _Defender_ ’s raking fire, then on his windward side the lethal broadsides of the _Dauntless_ with her hundred hungry guns; then, if the pirate’s ship survived, the _Defender_ on his lee, her fewer guns even more deadly when the _Pearl_ ’s decks, heeled hard over, would be fully exposed.   And finally, if necessary, the _Defender_ with her superior speed would be able to rake the _Pearl_ ’s bow for a final strike while the _Dauntless_ harried her flank. They had planned well.  The _Black Pearl_ ’s course was a choice of desperation not threat. Nevertheless, he could not shake the feeling that a predator was stalking them.  The pirate hunter fought the urge to behave like prey.  It was illogical, utter nonsense. 

It did not help that the storm was hobbling the Royal Navy as well.  The small swift brig could not even consider opening her gun ports in such heavy weather.  She would be limited to her main deck guns.  Nor, broad reaching in the following seas, could she hope to spill enough wind to provide a very wide window of opportunity. But what shots she could get off were far more likely to find a target down the full length of the _Black Pearl_ than if the ships were broadside to each other.  And, Norrington reassured himself, even if they’d be unable to utilize their largest guns on the lowest gun decks, no pirate crew could match the trained and practiced gunnery of his men on the _Dauntless._

Jack Sparrow would not escape this time.  Nor would his lovely ship.

* * * * *

Cotton’s parrot, who had abandoned the sinking ship in a high dudgeon, rejoined the _Black Pearl_ , a wet and disgruntled piece of sunshine and blue sky huddled on the helmsman’s shoulder, muttering parroty profanities into Cotton’s ear. Everyone cheered, taking his return as a sign that the _Pearl_ would stay afloat.

The jubilation at the righting of the ship was short lived, however, when it became apparent just how badly damaged she had been by that capsize. 

The constant creak and grind of pumps as the men cranked at the bars until their shoulders nearly dropped was a reminder that far too much water had invaded her holds. Everything on her decks had been washed away, her boats stove in and swept to sea.    Half a dozen of her sails had been ripped out of their gaskets by the wave and were now restrained only by their clew and buntlines, and several of her yards were detached, hanging only by their lifts.  But the most immediate danger came from the long split in the main topgallant mast that was threatening to descend on their bloody heads at any moment.

“Gibbs, I need that spar back aboard!” Jack shouted, decisions already multiplying frantically in his head.  “Anamaria, rig the tackle for fishing that mast—we’ve got to get it splinted.”

The two of them dashed off, trailing strings of orders and swirling eddies of men, to carry out his instructions.

Taking charge of the remaining crew, Jack ordered, “Starboard watch, lay aloft to secure those yards and get that gear stripped off.  Re-rig them and rove their lifts, braces and sheets. Larboard, take in any sails that are too damaged to reattach and furl the shredded canvas. We’ll salvage what we can.”

With agile confidence, his men leapt to the ratlines at his command, the press of the wind on their bodies forcing them to strain for every step. 

Jack watched them climb high into the dark, boiling clouds. The wild, deep chant of the _Black Pearl_ ’s passage through the storm filled her captain as though it were his soul singing.  But the song held notes of discord now. The high seas, marching in endless succession, broke over her bulwarks, filling her decks, battering her starboard bow, driving it off to leeward.  The wind lashed the surface of the water into the air, sending spray thundering to her tops. As the _Pearl_ slammed into the seas, parting them, her hull flipped from side to side wrenching her spars. She was such an intricate and marvelous creature, but therein lay also her vulnerability.  So much needed to work together for her to fly—so much that was now hopelessly fouled. 

His crew would spend their last strength to save this ship, to halt her slide into disaster.  Her captain would use every last scrap of knowledge and imagination and bloody invention to give them a chance.  But it would not be enough.  The two warships waiting beyond the channel would see to that.

Standing his ground by the weather shrouds, soaking wet, the wind leaching the heat from his body, Captain Jack Sparrow watched the strained, gaunt faces of his crew, their eyes glazed with fatigue but not giving in to fear.  They were a crowd of roistering, whoring, drunkards, scraped together from the lowest dens of wretchedness and vice, a motley lot, composed of all nations—but a brotherhood standing together, willing to perform any act of daring and desperation.  These were the men who had chosen to follow him to the gates of hell. He would not let himself wonder which of these faces he would never see alive again, whose voices never hear.

* * * * *

Gibbs arrived back at Jack’s side, having delivered his team and the dripping spar into Anamaria’s hands.  Even now the massive timber was being trussed and edged up the main mast.

With worried eyes, Gibbs surveyed the turmoil of preparations surging over the _Black Pearl_.  “Even if ye save that mast, Captain,” he said, “she hasn’t got enough sail left on her to outrun those Navy ships.”

 “Then we’ll need to bend on every sail she’s got.  Put up our shirts if we have to,” Jack commented matter-of-factly, as though he’d already thought this through.

“Captain,” Gibbs protested. “Ye’ll never haul those bloody sails up in this blow! They’ll light out for the Americas and not stop until they get there.  We’ll be lucky if they don’t take half the crew with them.”

“Well then,” Jack grinned madly.  “We’ll just have to furl those sails _before_ we bend them on, won’t we?”

Gibbs opened his mouth, got a strange look on his face, and shut it again.  He raised an eyebrow and shrugged.  Like so many of Jack’s daft plans, that one just might work. 

“Get your crew to rig the spare sails on the top gun deck,” Jack ordered. “I want the least surface area possible on that canvas.”

“Aye sir,” Gibbs agreed, beginning to turn away.  Suddenly he halted and twisted back.  There was just one small flaw in this whole plan.  “Jack, we’ll never make it in time.”

“I know.”  Jack’s eyes traveled over his wounded ship like a man’s might over his dying lover.  “But if I can hold the Navy off just long enough, perhaps . . .”  His voice trailed off. With restless fingertips he traced patterns in the raindrops on the _Black Pearl_ ’s rail.

Captain Jack Sparrow made a habit of believing in the impossible. It chilled Gibbs far more than wind and rain to realize that this time even Jack didn’t quite believe he could pull off the miracle.

* * * * *

Captain Sparrow made the decision.  They would spill as much wind as they dared from the _Black Pearl_ ’s remaining sails.  As long as they could draw out their passage through the perilous breakers at the far side of the bar, they would be safe from the Navy ships.  He had to buy his ship time to recover. No matter that to attempt to salvage their main topgallant mast and bend on new sails under such conditions was utter madness. He had to take that chance.

Such an order was going to be a test of his helmsmen’s skill and nerve.  At the heavy wheel, he found Cotton and Tearlach battling their treacherous and wily antagonist in the impossible task of keeping the _Pearl_ ’s bow facing the waves.  Again and again the ship would fall off, lying broadside on to them, rolling so hard her yardarms plunged into the sea.  The two of them stared at him in disbelief when he informed them that they were to do their best to see that the ship was brought to right in the middle of this maelstrom.  The current would keep them moving towards the open sea, but the captain wanted the ship delayed as long as possible.

Even the parrot had a comment: “Three sheets to the wind.” 

Jack snorted. “Mr. Cotton, you never said a truer word.”

Tearlach stepped aside to allow the captain to take the wheel.  Captain Sparrow’s feeling for the wind, his sense of the size and direction of the seas, and his uncanny knowledge of how and when to respond were legendary.  If difficult piloting was in order, Jack was the man they wanted at the helm. 

The feel of his ship in his hands again was such a relief to Jack that it took him a moment to react to the set of butcher’s knives that was carving up his chest every time he pressed on the wheel.  In the mayhem of restoring the _Black Pearl_ he’d been aware that he’d be paying for those broken ribs at some date, but he’d been ignoring them. Now they’d come to collect. He could almost bear the pain if he didn’t use his right arm, but Cotton was going to need more help than he could provide. The minute the strain on the ship’s rudder relaxed again, Jack surrendered.

“Tearlach,” he managed, shocked to hear how breathless his voice sounded. “You’ll have to take her. I’m afraid I’m pretty near scuppered.”

The captain certainly looked like it was bellows to mend with him.  Tearlach swiftly seized the helm and added his strength to Cotton’s. 

The big man considered his captain, his face showing his concern.  Then his eyes sought out Anamaria.

“No!” Jack gasped. Of all the things he really didn’t need, his first mate fussing over him pretty much topped the list. Well, perhaps came second.  Right after bloody devious commodores with undamaged warships.

Tearlach nodded. He could perfectly understand a desire to remain far away from Anamaria.  Together he and Cotton followed the captain’s instructions to bear off or head up in order to take the blows of the furious seas at the best angle.

However, Captain Sparrow soon found himself with too many crises to keep track of. 

The scene aboard his ship was a last gasp away from complete chaos.  Like a high-couraged horse fighting all restraint, the _Black Pearl_ reared and lunged against the clawing hands of the sea, tossing her bowsprit high in the air, then plunging into the gaping troughs, twisting dangerously in the deep cross swells, dashing her yardarms down into the steep-sided waves.  Out on those spars, his crew clung grimly to the jackstays, dodging the flailing strips of number one canvas that seemed hell-bent on flinging them into the sea, riding out the monstrous, relentless energy of the ship and the storm on the wildly dancing footropes. Their legs shook with the strain of stabilizing the lines that snapped back and forth under their motion. Certain death was only the slightest slip away. 

Fanned out along the windward sides of the yards, slithering on the footropes, they battled with the wet, heavy sails, trying to pound the stiff canvas into graspable shapes, leaning so far over the yards that their feet, jammed onto the footropes, swung high into the air as though they’d dive into the deck.  Time and again they would have the canvas nearly muzzled when a blast of wind would rip it from their fingers.

Furling these scraps of sails for salvage would have taken five minutes in fair weather. In this bloody gale it would be a long and intense battle.  The board-stiff canvas exploded against their hands, ripping nails and bludgeoning knuckles.  The blood of that skirmish stained the sails.  The wind screamed with the voices of his crew in five languages cursing each other, the weather, the Navy, God, and all the whores in Singapore.

There was a note of desperate exhilaration in those voices.

“Who let go?  Who let go of the bloody sail?  Damn it haul away and hold on!”

“Now boys, on my word, all together. Ready? Now pull!”

“Bring it in! Handsomely now!”

“Keep a hold! Can’t ye hang on t’ a wee bit o’ canvas?”

Jack still had new crew up on those yards—boys who were only just beginning to believe that they might not die when they pivoted on their bellies over the yard to grab for the sail, and the footrope flipped up and out until their legs were level with their backs.  He could hear the exasperated roar of an experienced seaman goading them, “Let go o’ the jackstays ye greenhorns and lend a hand!  I’ll be damned if I ever seen more useless lumps aloft!  Lay out here or when we get down I’ll feed y’ t’ the first mate!”

The corner of the captain’s mouth lifted.  There was a threat to strike fear into the souls of those hapless crewmen.

One of the newest of his men had still not dredged up enough courage to set foot on the ratlines again.  Jack could see that Anamaria had noticed and was beginning her stalk in that direction.  He had no doubt that his first mate was capable of making the solid decks of the _Black Pearl_ seem a far more terrifying place than the highest swaying mast, but the captain thought he might take this one himself.  The kid had been one of his recruits after all.  Well, “recruiting” was perhaps an inaccuracy. “Pirating” might work better; “kidnapping” possibly struck closer to the heart of the matter. Jack had forced this one off his former ship with a pistol to his head. 

The boy had had too much of the spirit beaten out of him ever to go against orders sufficiently to escape his abusive merchant captain and sign on to a pirate crew. So Captain Jack Sparrow had removed the necessity of him having to make the choice and included him with the rest of the swag. 

The stripes on his back had scarred over.  With better grub, his health had returned. But Jack could still see the injuries that mattered, the lacerations on the soul that broke open in the lad’s cringing behaviour and bled from the fear in his eyes. No, this boy did not need the concentrated vituperation of Anamaria’s sort of motivation at this moment.  He caught his first mate’s eye and read her comprehension. They exchanged nods and Anamaria veered off her course, leaving Jack to do the job at which she knew he was better than she. 

Leaving his really quite competent helmsmen, Jack charted a wide circle around his quarry, not wanting to startle him by coming up behind. Even so, he saw the boy stiffen, and his eyes, if it were possible, grow even wider. To draw the captain’s attention was no small matter in his world. He backed up a step, and Jack stopped moving.

“Requin,” Jack called. The name still made him laugh inside.  Of all the hyperbolic, inaccurate misnomers, that one took the prize.  “Shark,” the kid had named himself, trying to sound like a pirate. Perhaps he would one day grow into the name. 

The boy froze again. “Aye, sir?” he responded shakily.

Jack closed the gap between them now that he was sure the kid wouldn’t bolt.  Requin could speak sufficient English to understand the operations of the ship, but the captain slipped smoothly into the French that was the boy’s native tongue.  “Easy now, lad,” he soothed.  He could see Requin relax a little at the familiar words.

Looking up at the dark mast rising above the two of them, Jack spoke as though thinking aloud, “There’s no shame in being afraid, son.” The boy made a noise of denial, but subsided when the captain shook his head.  Jack placed a hand on the vibrating line of the shroud.  “Fear is a wind that blows on us all.”

Turning to face Requin, Jack held his eyes. “What you have now is a choice.  Will you let that wind fill your sails?  Or will you let it snap your masts and shred your canvas?  Will you use it to give you strength? Or will you be used by it?”

The boy bowed his head.

Jack stroked the rigging under his hand. “She’s a grand ship, Requin.  She’ll take care of you, if you let her.  There’s only the wind and the sea and the ship up there.  Those are all good things, whatever happens.” 

He reached out and gripped the young man’s shoulder, feeling the steel returning to his spine. He grinned at Requin.  “What say you, boy?  Can you trust yourself and this ship?  Can she trust you?”

Requin returned a tentative smile.  “Aye, sir.”

“Good lad.” Jack nodded his approval.  “Up you go then.”  He waited until Requin was firmly on his way, slow but determined, then he headed towards the forecastle. On the way there, he fell into step with Anamaria.

“Jack Sparrow,” Anamaria shook her head, glancing up at the main topsail yard where Requin had joined his mates on the footropes, “I hope you never try to convince me that I can fly.”

 “Why Anamaria, love,” Jack’s eyebrow climbed under the brim of his hat and his slow smile curved full of mischief, “of course you can.”

* * * * *

Gibbs had finally managed to corner the captain on the water-logged forecastle deck of the _Black Pearl_ , an accomplishment of some note since Jack appeared determined to oversee the repairs to his ship personally and simultaneously.  For the longest time, the captain had seemed to be everywhere Gibbs looked but nowhere at which he actually arrived.  Even now the demented man was off to supervise something else.  Gibbs had to jog along, grabbing for lines when the ship rolled and the seas swept her decks, to keep up with Jack as he headed back towards the quarterdeck.

“Captain.” Gibbs’ voice was grim.  “We got a problem.”

“We’ve got a great many problems, Mr. Gibbs,” Jack commented waving one arm to encompass the wreckage of the _Black Pearl._ He widened his eyes and peered inquiringly at his quartermaster.  “Could you be a bit more specific?”

There was no easy way to deliver this news, so Gibbs opted for the brutally direct. “Our powder’s scuppered, Captain. The _Pearl_ ’s holds are swamped and she’s still takin’ on water.  The magazine’s gone under. We’d have to dive for it, and there’s no hope in hell the powder hasn’t been dampened.”

He waited for the captain to do something—lose his temper and curse the heavens, reveal some madcap, suicidal plot to utilize wet powder, explain how this was all part of some deeply-laid, fiendishly clever plan. But Jack simply nodded.

“I figured as much,” he said.  “So, we face the Royal mastiffs with our wings clipped and our teeth pulled, eh?” 

“That about sums it up.” Gibbs tried to match the captain’s nonchalant tone, but he succeeded only in sounding half strangled.

“Never mind.” Jack shrugged. “If we’re to bend enough canvas to outrun those bastards, we’ll need every able-bodied man on her sails.  And with those Navy cannon doing their bloody best to undo our work, we’ll be repairing this ship as fast as they can take her apart.  We couldn’t spare the crew to man her guns anyway.”

Gibbs swallowed hard.  And he’d thought that bar had been bad.  “This is not going to go well, is it?” he said hollowly. 

Still keeping his eye on the massive activity around him, Jack answered him, “Not likely.”

“Have we any chance?” Gibbs asked, not sure he wanted to know the answer to that.

“Well now, that’ll depend, won’t it?” Jack transferred his attention to the heaving gray-green expanse of ocean ahead of them where the brig was pulling away from the _Dauntless_ and beginning its move to intercept the _Black Pearl._   “The storm’s in our favour.  They’ll not be opening their lower gunports in this chop.  And it won’t matter how fine their gunnery is—their aim will be shot to hell.  On the other hand, they’ll have plenty of time to practice. Until the _Pearl_ ’s got her legs back, even the _Dauntless_ is goin’ to be able to outrun her.” Jack gave a humourless bark of laughter, then looked as though he regretted that action.  “I wish we could count on ol’ Norrington fightin’ like the British.” 

Gibbs nodded. “Ah. Royal Navy doctrine. Kill the crews and leave the ships. All shots between wind and water. Aye. That’d give what’s left of us a chance t’ run for it.”

“But I wouldn’t put it past the good commodore to have borrowed a page from the French book.  No doubt he’ll be tryin’ to take down our masts and rigging as well.” Jack grimaced. “Any way you look at it, we’ll be payin’ in blood for that open sea.”

* * * * *

TBC

 


	6. Troubles Come Not Single Spies

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Anamaria decides something needs to be done about Jack.

In the frenzy to restore some of the _Black Pearl_ ’s legendary swift flight to her, some time had slipped by before Anamaria noticed that Jack was not recuperating from whatever injuries he’d taken when his ship went down.  Oh, he was playing Captain Jack Sparrow to the hilt, stirring up the crew like a stick in an ant hill, leaving whirlpools of activity in his wake as he rampaged the heaving, sea-swept decks, spinning miracles out of sailcloth and thin air in their race to bring the _Pearl_ back to life before her clash with the Royal Navy warships that hovered like beasts of battle beyond the mouth of the harbour.  But whenever he thought he had deflected all attention from himself, the fire guttered out of him like a rain-quenched candle.  Nor did he lend his weight to hauling lines as he usually did when the torrent of tasks exceeded the number of hands that could turn to them.

What finally clinched her decision, however, was when Jack joined Cotton at the helm to guide the _Pearl_ through a particularly nasty set of cross seas, nothing like the vicious waves that had nearly scuppered them, but capable of doing harm nonetheless.  The captain had only managed to grip the wheel with one hand, and at that Anamaria was certain Cotton had borne the brunt of that tussle.  She had to see to the ship, but she began to watch her captain just as carefully.  He was holding his right arm unnaturally still, cradled protectively across his body, and his usual grace seemed to have abandoned him.

If what she feared was true, Jack was very much in danger of damaging himself beyond their limited means of repair.  They had so little time before they would emerge far enough into open seas for the Navy ships to dare confront them.  Every minute they could steal in the meantime was more precious than gold, increasing their chance of survival ever so slightly.  But if she did not force Jack to submit to some cobbled together patchwork, he might not last out the coming battle.

Discretion warred briefly with what she frankly admitted was pure lily-livered cowardice. Jack Sparrow made the bloody awfullest patient.  And he wasn’t going to forgive her any time soon for interrupting him.  But a first mate had her duty to her captain and her ship.

Anamaria began mentally to cast about for allies. 

Her eyes lit on Jip as he scurried past.  Reaching out, she snagged him by the collar.  Ignoring his startled yelp, she informed him, “I’ve got a little chore for you.”

* * * * *

“Mr. Gibbs,” Anamaria said briskly. “I’m goin’ t’ take out the captain, and I need you to back me up.”

Gibbs scowled at Anamaria. He’d been considering enlisting her assistance for that very project for some minutes now.  There was something blasted uncanny about how that woman read his mind.  Jack was looking grayer by the moment, refusing to slow his pace at the expense of whatever it was that was causing him to stiffen up like a Navy martinet.  He’d even stumbled during a particularly violent lurch of his ship, and Jack Sparrow never lost his balance when his ship moved. Yes, it was time his officers did something about their refractory captain.

While Gibbs didn’t see eye to eye with Anamaria on any number of matters, on this they were in perfect accord.  Gibbs nodded shortly to the first mate and fell in beside her.  Shoulder to shoulder they marched up behind Jack.

“Mr. Gibbs, I been thinkin’.” Anamaria grabbed Jack’s left arm. “This ship is goin’ t’ fight a hell of a lot better if her captain ain’t wiped out on her quarterdeck.  What say you t’ that?”

Jack’s head whipped around with a thirty-two pound glare that should have knocked Anamaria’s head off her shoulders.

Gibbs took a firm grip on his right arm.  “Anamaria,” he agreed heartily, drawing some of Jack’s fire, “for a lass, ye’ve got a powerful grasp o’ logic.”  Fortunately, she also had a powerful grasp on Jack Sparrow’s good arm, or Gibbs expected he’d have been spitting a few teeth.

Between the two of them they began hustling their captain towards the mainmast fife rail in a highly undignified manner.  They’d never get him to go out of sight of the work on deck, so this would have to do. Jack made an abortive attempt to escape, but his body wasted no time in informing him that pulverizing his mate and quartermaster would be a pleasure he would have to postpone for a more auspicious moment—assuming they survived to find one.

“Is this a mutiny?” Jack growled half-heartedly.

“Let me see,” Anamaria considered. “A mutiny is when we want t’ be gettin’ rid of our captain, but we seem t’ be tryin’ t’ keep this bloody daft one around a bit longer.” She looked critically at Jack. “God only knows why.”

At that moment, the _Pearl_ buried her bowsprit into the face of an oncoming sea. The mass of water cannonading over the forecastle bowled men over, washing them forty feet down her decks, slamming those unlucky enough not to grab a line into rails and bulwarks.  For one heartstopping moment, Anamaria was certain they’d lost somebody, but as the deck reappeared, she breathed again to find the considerably more battered and bruised crew still intact.

Gibbs had been the closest one to the lifeline. He’d held to it and Jack, while Anamaria had clung to Jack.  Apparently that ordeal had taken all the fight out of the captain.  Head hanging, white under his tan, his breath ragged as he wrestled the pain back into submission, Jack allowed them to haul him unresisting to the rail surrounding the mainmast and the pumps.

The captain roused himself enough to give the men labouring and sweating at the pumps a teeth-gritted grin. “Good work, lads,” he managed.

They grunted back at him, too exhausted to do or say anything more.

Since Jack seemed in no condition to make a break for his freedom at the moment, his captors let him go. Sure enough, he merely folded his arms around his chest and stood shaking.

“Sit down before you fall down, Jack Sparrow,” Anamaria ordered, “and let me take a look at that.”

“Aye, aye, sir.” Jack saluted sloppily with his left hand.  “Harpy,” he muttered under his breath. He sank down onto the fife-rail.

“I’ll just be makin’ sure the boys ain’t breakin’ the ship, or somethin’. He’s all yours,” Gibbs said smugly, departing with alacrity before his captain could tie into him with that cutlass of a tongue he could wield on occasion.  For once he was glad there was too much to do for his presence at an attempt to doctor the captain to be anything more than redundant. It was payback time for Anamaria.  This would make up for any number of bad weather watches.  “Good luck!” he called back.

“Sod off, ye blasted coward,” Anamaria grumbled.  She turned to her intractable patient and glared at him. 

Jack stared back at her mulishly. “What?”

“Take your shirt off, Jack,” Anamaria snapped.

“I thought you’d never ask, love,” Jack smirked, then winced, his breath hissing in sharply, as he tried.

“Just what I thought, y’daft fool. Y’ broke some ribs, didn’t you?” Anamaria groused. “Let me get that.”

She tried to be careful as she drew off the captain’s coat and vest, but the heavy, wet cloth refused to let go without a fight.

“Watch what you’re doin’ there,” Jack complained. “A body’d think you’d never undressed a man before.”

Rolling her eyes in exasperation, Anamaria stopped trying to be careful. Jack went another shade paler. Nevertheless, as she drew his soggy shirt over his head and then slipped it forward off his arms, the captain kept up his aggravating commentary.

“I do like a lass who’ll take the lead once in awhile. Oww!” Jack’s pained outcry had little to do with his injuries and everything to do with the slap that was ringing his ears. “Blast it, woman!  Are you tryin’ t’ kill me?”

Anamaria caught a good look at him and successfully swallowed any exclamation she might have made.  “Looks like someone beat me to it,” she said.

Jack craned his neck and peered at his chest, eyes nearly crossing. “Well now. You’re a rank apprentice when it comes to wallopin’ your captain, eh darlin’?” he suggested. “This here is master work.”

Across his torso, from right hip to opposite shoulder, the imprint of the _Black Pearl_ ’s wheel marked him with contusions that were the angry red and purple of a Caribbean sunset after a storm. No wonder he’d been moving so carefully.

Reaching for the nearest bit of exposed wood, Jack patted his ship comfortingly. “Never mind, love.  I know I deserved that.”

Anamaria snorted.  “I’ll say.”

Jack scowled at her. “Nobody asked you.” He glanced pointedly at his chest. “Do you want to get busy with whatever witchdoctorin’ you’re plannin’ before I freeze to death in this rain?”

He was shivering and showing signs of gooseflesh.  Immediately contrite, although she’d never let Jack know it, Anamaria scanned the deck for her other accomplice. He came galloping along the pitching planks, barely visible behind the armful of supplies she’d sent him to find.  Sliding to a halt beside her, Jip announced brightly, “Here’s the things you ordered, ma’am.”

Trust the little thief to know where every item on the _Pearl_ was located.  Anamaria nodded her thanks. 

Jack shot the pint-sized traitor an _et tu Brute_ glower that bounced ineffectually off Jip’s impervious hide.

At the sight of the captain’s bruises, Jip’s eyes widened.  “Criminy!” he exclaimed admiringly. “That was a real smasher!”

Jack unbent from his indignation at the first sign of an appreciative audience.  He inspected his multi-hued decorations with a satisfied air.  “She’s some ship, ain’t she?”

“She sure is, sir!” Jip agreed enthusiastically.

Anamaria rolled her eyes. Men! They were stark raving mad, the lot of them, from cradle to grave.

“Here.” She dropped Jack’s hat onto Jip’s drowned-rat hair and added the coat, vest and shirt to the pile in his arms.  Jip now resembled a stack of clothing with legs. “Make yourself useful.”

She scrutinized Jack, ignoring his suggestive leer back.  At least the right side of his chest was still rising in time with his left side. Anamaria let out a breath of relief.  They’d really have been scuppered if the captain had broken enough ribs to cave them in. 

“So where does it hurt?” she asked him.

Jack raised an incredulous eyebrow.  “Isn’t it obvious?”

“I’m tryin’ t’ find out which ribs y’ broke, y’ bacon brain!”

Ignoring Jack’s objections to her cold hands, Anamaria ran dispassionate fingertips along the track the _Black Pearl_ had left on his ribs.  She also determinedly ignored the smooth slide of his skin, wet with rain, the faint warmth like the memory of sunlight still escaping off his body, the intriguing difference in texture between scarred and unmarked flesh.  The rolling ship was not making it easy to be gentle. She felt Jack tense under her touch just as her fingers brushed carefully over a shallow, unnatural indentation.

“Ah ha!” she exclaimed. “That’ll be the culprit then.”

Two ribs. Bad enough, but it could have been worse.

“Apparently so,” Jack agreed through clenched teeth. “Will you hurry up? I’ve got a Navy to escape.”

“And you’ll need both your lungs to do it,” Anamaria said firmly, grabbing a wad of fabric from the perambulating clothes pile standing next to her. Expertly she folded it into a thick pad.  “Now hold that against your side,” she instructed Jack. “You know the drill.”

“I do know it,” he grumped. “And I’m tellin’ you now; you’re not trussin’ up one o’ me arms like a goose, neither.”

Since she wasn’t ready to start an argument with him yet, Anamaria simply fished her next item from Jip’s arms.

“What’s that?” Jack asked suspiciously.

“Leather,” she said succinctly. “For a splint since you’re so bloody sure I can’t use your arm.”  Anamaria wrapped the stiff leather around the pad already in place. “Now at least if y’ bump it again, y’ have a chance o’ not makin’ it worse.”

“Hmph.” Jack subsided, taking over holding the leather while Anamaria selected two long sashes to tie the contraption to his chest. 

“Now breathe deep and hold it,” she instructed.

“No.” Jack was looking obstinate again.

“Jack,” Anamaria warned.

“Don’t want to.”

“Don’t have a choice,” said his first mate, threatening one of her neck-dislocating slaps. “This ain’t supposed t’ stop your breathin’, so I need t’ know how tight t’ tie it.”

Knowing she was right, Jack closed his eyes and did as he was told, his fingers gripping the rail nearly tight enough to leave prints in the wood.  Anamaria secured the strips of fabric as firmly and swiftly as she could. 

“All right,” she told Jack.  “Let it out.”

Eyes still closed, Jack said in a strained voice, “Your great, great, great grandmammy slept with Torquemada, didn’t she?”

Anamaria leaned close to him, her teeth bared in a feral grin. “Maybe she did. Now let’s get you back in your clothes.” 

“But we haven’t had any fun at all yet,” Jack protested. 

In response, Anamaria held out his shirt. “Get – in.” 

After much struggling with wet cloth and much profane grumbling from Jack, she and Jip succeeded in inserting the captain back into his shirt and vest and tugging Jack’s soggy coat back over his shoulders.  Jack looked ready to bite something.

“And now you’re goin’ t’ let me put your arm in a sling,” she informed him.

The captain stood up. “Absolutely not.”

“Oh yes you are.” Anamaria held out the offending article.  “You can pull your arm out of it if you have to.  I won’t insist you tie it down.  But it goes on.  You’ve got to keep that arm as still as possible.”

“Anamaria, I’ve got a ship to run and a battle to survive. Contrary to popular opinion, I can’t do that with one hand tied behind my back. That’s m’ sword arm, y’ know.”

“Just don’t let this ship be boarded, that’s all,” Anamaria suggested.

Jack informed her creatively and rudely just where she could put her advice and her sling.

“Your arm’ll be tied in front, Jack. And y’ can move it.  Now sit back down and don’t be such a mooncalf.”

She managed to get the fabric wrapped around the recalcitrant pirate’s arm, tucked under his heavy wet hair, and tied in a neat knot.  Jack Sparrow was as hard to handle as canvas in a storm, but sooner or later an expert sailor would get the situation under control.  Anamaria had been getting plenty of practice. 

She expected to be treated to a further display of the captain’s temper, but another wave hailing across the ship’s decks left them clinging to the fife-rail, spluttering.  Jack didn’t look well, but he brightened when Jip, still standing by, held up a familiar flask.

“Jip, you’re an angel,” Jack said fervently, grabbing the flask and downing its contents in one long gulp, as if the rum weren’t straight and strong enough to dissolve lead.

“Gibbs says I’m the devil,” Jip corrected.

“That too.” Jack wiped his mouth with his free arm.  “I don’t suppose you asked Mr. Gibbs for the loan of his flask?”

Jip shook his head. “Nicked it,” he said proudly. 

“Good lad,” Jack approved.  “Now see if you can get it back t’ him before he misses it.”

“Aye, sir.” Giving the captain a ragged salute and tossing Anamaria the captain’s hat, the boy bounced off to return the pilfered property.

Deprived of what little shield Jip’s presence had supplied, Anamaria braced for Jack’s explosion, but once again he surprised her.

Giving a shallow sigh and closing his eyes again, he tilted back his head. “That’s much better,” he said. “Thanks, love.”

Wordlessly she stared down on him, startled.  Jack’s eyes flew open.  He gave a small, half smile and ducked his head.

“Hat?”

* * * * *

Anamaria had just set Jack’s hat back on his head when he stiffened, eyes going blank and introspective, the two lines between his brows furrowing.

“What is it?” Anamaria asked, wondering if he were hurting worse.

“Something’s wrong.” Jack leapt to his feet with an energy she would have said was impossible a minute ago. Spinning about, he scanned up the masts and rigging receding into the murk of the storm for some problem only he could sense. “Damnation! I can’t see a thing in this bloody soup!”

He stood quivering tense for a moment, listening, watching. For what? Anamaria still could not tell what had triggered his alert.

Suddenly he lit out for the quarterdeck. “Oh shit!”

Completely confused, Anamaria ran after him. 

At that moment the _Pearl_ twisted violently, nearly broadsided by another wave. Above the thunder of wind and sails resounded the crack of wood and the snap of lines. In futile horror, Anamaria saw the great mizzen topgallant yard break free of its starboard moorings and swing wildly in brutal counterpoint to the motion of the ship.  She could hear the groan of the mizzenmast as the huge spar, fifty feet long and a foot in diameter, scythed back and forth across the width of the _Pearl,_ slicing the salt thick air.

“Lay aloft to secure that yard!” the captain was shouting. “Get it tied down before it tears the sticks right out of her!”

Instantly and unquestioningly, men leapt for the windward ratlines and surged towards the careering yard. With bloody hands they climbed the rigging that thrummed and sang in the wild wind, one hundred feet in the air. Each time the _Black Pearl_ drove her yard ends into the furious seas, they froze, hanging on for their lives.

Captain Sparrow stood immobile on the quarterdeck, his neck craned back until it ached, never taking his eyes off his men as they climbed towards that breakaway yard that threatened to rip the heart out of his ship.  His unnatural silence accentuated the terrible danger they courted. As the vicious spar whipped from side to side above them, it seemed to miss by mere inches.  Any moment it could crush a man or smash him into the sea.

Only luck and desperate agility could save those men now.  They would live only if the ship survived, and so they must fight to save the ship, reckless of the cost.

* * * * *

TBC

 


	7. To Dare Do All That May Become a Man

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Just how did Ragetti and Pintel end up back on the Black Pearl?

The first man in that race for the swinging spar, Anamaria noted with disdain, was one of those wretches who’d mutinied and left Jack to die—Ragetti, the disgusting little creep.  If anyone were going to get swept off into the sea, she would be satisfied if it were him.  Pintel and Ragetti were the two exceptions to her unceasing care for Jack’s crew.  As far as she was concerned, accidental death for those two could not occur too soon.

Anamaria had never agreed with Jack Sparrow’s decision to sign on his former crew members.  As far a she was concerned, those bloody mutineers should have been hanged from the highest yardarm and thrown to the sharks.  For weeks after he’d done what she considered one of the stupidest things in a long and varied career of stupid things, they’d argued violently, far into the nights with predictable results.  Anamaria would whip herself into a frothing, screaming fury, while Jack would grow progressively more sarcastic and evasive, playing the fool to the limits of his abilities and her endurance.  Nothing he said made any sense, but he could always slip past her logic like a greased pig.  He was Captain Jack Sparrow, and apparently that conferred immortality and invulnerability upon him.

Finally, the captain had tired of the amusement.  The next time they crossed blades on the subject, she found the fool had evaporated, leaving pure acid Jack Sparrow.

“Anamaria,” he said succinctly, his eyes like dark stone walls through which no light could shine, “I’m the captain on this ship and so my word is the one that goes here.  Pintel and Ragetti are staying until I say otherwise.  I’m not asking you to like them. I’m not even asking you to trust them.  In fact, I’d rather you didn’t.  But you have a choice.  Either you can accept that I want them on this ship and we’ll have no more discussion about it, or you can turn this into a war that we both lose.”

In the end, Anamaria, who had never developed a talent for backing down from a fight, resigned her sword in this one.  It nearly broke her neck to bow it, but she nodded stiffly and left without a word.  A dispute with Captain Sparrow about two such snake’s bellies as Pintel and Ragetti was not worth the price.  She could see the fragile, newly-woven trust that hovered between them unraveling before her eyes.  If there was one thing that could freeze Jack Sparrow to ice, it was a first mate who couldn’t follow his orders. There were not yet enough new memories to eclipse that dark past. She did not know if there ever would be.

And so she barely tolerated the presence of those irritating living flotsam. If she occasionally had a few conversations with the _Pearl_ on the advantages of losing a couple of crewmen, well, what Jack didn’t know, he couldn’t bring down on her head.  So far the ship hadn’t seemed to pay her opinions any more attention than the captain had. 

At least Jack displayed some prudence in handling his former shipmates.  He never assigned them to boarding parties until all threats of violence had passed. When Anamaria mentioned this omission, Jack frowned and explained, “They have the wrong instincts.  I can’t trust them to know when not to kill.”

For her part, Anamaria kept a suspicious eye on all their activities. If they went ashore, she had her spies accompany them with instructions to place no hindrance on any attempts to desert. She always assigned them to crews with firmly loyal men. And whenever she could, she kept them separated. Work them too hard to give them time to plot—that was her theory.  Ragetti was the follower, so she watched Pintel more closely. The stocky pirate was far more prone to violence and underhanded behaviour—but whatever Pintel did, Ragetti did too. While the one-eyed pirate was a well-read man, he was too intelligent to have any earthly smarts, as Gibbs had said. For this reason Ragetti depended on Pintel to navigate the day-to-day realities of life. Unfortunately Pintel wasn’t any too smart himself, so they were constantly getting themselves into mingle-mangles that defied description. They made Jack laugh—the only use she could see for the two of them.

It occurred to her that Pintel and Ragetti had known Jack Sparrow long before anyone else on the ship.  They were the only ones who remembered, with Jack, the glory days of the _Black Pearl_ , when she and her captain were both unscarred by curses or betrayals.  Sometimes of a gentle summer’s night, when the _Pearl_ sailed free, and rum and music flowed, Pintel would tell stories of those days, wild tales, side-splitting tales, mysterious ones—the stuff of legends. Ragetti would interject comments and echoes and prompts only to be summarily whacked by the indignant storyteller.  At those times, Anamaria would see Jack in the shadows just outside the ring of lantern light, listening, unreadable expressions chasing themselves across his face like clouds scudding before the wind.

Once when Pintel began his story, “I mind the time Bootstrap put the iguana in ol’ Hector’s bed . . .” Jack rose hastily and vanished in the direction of the stern.  It was a calm evening, luminous with stars, fragrant with the breath of the sea.  But apparently the _Black Pearl_ could not sail another instant without her captain at her helm. He’d stayed there through all the watches of that night. Anamaria had held another one-sided conversation with the _Pearl_ the next morning.

Now she stood holding her breath, torn between her desire to see the ship safe again and her smoldering, hidden desire to be rid of these men who had hurt Jack Sparrow, who still had the power to do so.  Would this be the day the _Black Pearl_ answered her prayer?

* * * * *

Ragetti had been impossibly young when the mutiny had taken place. 

Jack Sparrow had made him nervous, a mercurial, young, devil-may-care captain who had seemed so much less competent than the hard-bitten, experienced, and determined Hector Barbossa.  Ragetti had always needed someone to follow.  He would never have risked speaking out against his crewmates as Bootstrap had done.  He’d thought he’d made the right choice, the safest choice, the choice that would give him the best chance of survival. 

That had been a monumental, epic piece of bad judgment in retrospect. 

The immortal torment of the curse had taught him one thing above all else:  there were things far worse than death to fear.   Ragetti had quickly learnt to shrug off his terror—to take out his own anguish on his victims.  He had found some satisfaction in becoming what he had always most dreaded.  But he’d never ceased to be afraid of people.  Their sudden storms of emotions, their endlessly critical judgments, their bottomless ability to cause each other pain—these things constantly paralyzed him.  No matter how often he sought approval, he met with contempt.  He didn’t dare seek out the intimacy of friendship, but the loneliness numbed him beyond what cursed gold could ever do.

Pintel had been the only man to show any concern or affection for the gangly, awkward youth, and for that reason Ragetti clung to that harsh, abrasive relationship.  Pintel let him follow, made the tough decisions, ground the sharp edges off his isolation.

Which was why he found himself on the _Black Pearl_ now, crew again to the man he had betrayed.  As Pintel had said, this ship was home.  She had a mysterious hold on every man who ever sailed her—as though no matter how far they ran from her, she would always draw them back, whether they willed or no—as though she owned them, and they must serve her. 

The _Black Pearl_ called men.  The only man who called her was Captain Jack Sparrow. 

Ragetti had been terrified when Pintel had dragged them to Captain Sparrow to offer themselves as crew again.   Now that the curse was lifted, the fear had flooded back into the vacuum left by the suffering.  He had relearned what it was like to hear the footsteps of his own mortality stealthy in the dark behind him.  He and Pintel had participated in the attempted murder of this man.  Surely their former captain would simply kill them as he had Barbossa.  Pintel was mad, Ragetti had decided.  But he couldn’t strike out on his own—the idea was unbearable. 

The events of that day had seared themselves into his memory forever.

* * * * *

Ragetti’s fears were confirmed when Captain Sparrow refused to speak to them together.  He called Ragetti into his cabin, the one where they’d attacked him on the night of the mutiny, the one where the persistent stains of Sparrow’s blood had never come out of the deck.  Ragetti stepped trembling over the threshold, feeling like a sacrificial animal, unable to take his eyes from the elaborate carpet that now covered that old scar of betrayal. 

Captain Sparrow watched him, dark eyes drilling holes in Ragetti’s black soul until the ichor of his guilt dripped invisibly from his hands and the stinging sweat beaded his brow. Ragetti stood, tongue turned as wooden as his false eye, swallowing until his Adam’s apple bobbed like a cork on a tempest-tossed sea.  Why had Pintel insisted that they approach this man who had proved in the end to be the match for the most evil man they’d ever known, whose mortal strength had brought down an immortal foe?

He nearly pissed himself when Captain Sparrow drew a dagger, slender and sharp as treachery.  His blood would join the captain’s on the floor of that cabin—an atonement of sorts—Ragetti was certain.

Then Sparrow spoke, his voice oddly light and unemotional.  “I’m curious, Ragetti.  Just why do you think I’d consider accepting you on my ship when you mutinied against me the last time you signed on to my articles?” 

Ragetti couldn’t speak around the dead lump of his tongue, didn’t know what he would have said if he could have answered.  Why, indeed? No reason at all, as he’d told Pintel in uncharacteristic forthrightness when the subject had first come up.  And so he stood there, head hanging, shoulders drooping, waiting fatalistically for the end, for the blow he’d been expecting.

“Get your head up, Ragetti. Straighten up, man.  Look at me!” Captain Sparrow snapped. His voice lowered, intense with menace. “Look me in the eyes.”

Instinctively, Ragetti obeyed, his spine jerking straight, his eye flying to the captain’s strangely-outlined, somber ones.  He couldn’t read the expression in them.  This was not a Jack Sparrow he recognized.  There was none of the flamboyance, the irreverent humour, the half-flash, half-foolish mannerisms.  This was the stillness of a predator, wary and dangerous—more so than he’d ever seen Barbossa. 

The captain seemed to be reading something in Ragetti’s face, for he remained silent for a long moment watching the trembling man.  Then he shrugged, relaxing slightly into a more familiar manifestation.  Gold glinted as he bared his teeth. The expression sent a chill through Ragetti.  A shark might smile so at injured prey.  

With a movement as swift as the wing-pivot of his namesake, Sparrow reversed the dagger, held it by the tip and offered the hilt to Ragetti.

“Take it,” he commanded.  “I’m not going to run my ship always looking over my shoulder, suspecting plots in the shadows. I don’t like turning my back on traitors—makes my shoulder blades itch.  So if you’re going to stab me in the back, now’s your chance.”

Bewildered, Ragetti involuntarily closed his hand around the hilt and found himself armed, while the weaponless Jack Sparrow shed his coat and turned his back on his former crewman. 

“Do try to get that between the correct ribs, Ragetti.  I hate a botched assassination,” Sparrow ordered.  “I don’t think anything between us calls for my protracted suffering.”

The two men stood in a frozen tableau for what seemed an aeon.  Ragetti stared from the deadly glint of the knife in his hand to the straight defiant back of Captain Sparrow.

Finally, the captain bounced on the balls of his feet.  “I’m waiting, Ragetti.  What seems to be the problem?”

“I—I—I can’t,” Ragetti stammered.

“Course you can!” Sparrow encouraged.  “It’s really quite simple.” His words took a downward twist of disgust.  “I’m sure you’ve stabbed men before—in the back, in the dark, men and women, and probably children, too.  It’s not that different.”

“I—I—I mean I don’t want to!” Ragetti cried in frustration, letting the dagger clatter to the deck plates.

Like a tiger, Jack Sparrow whirled smoothly around, crouched to sweep up the knife, and still in one liquid motion, grabbed Ragetti by the worn collar of his coat, pinning him, one handed, up against the bulkhead. The tip of the knife riveted Ragetti’s attention at the juncture of his throat and jaw.

“Don’t want to, Mister? Or are you too afraid to?” Sparrow spat through clenched teeth.

Ragetti shivered under the lash of that contempt, more painful to him than the threat of any knife. 

Captain Sparrow’s narrow, perilous face hovered far too near him, revealing no remnant of the softness Barbossa had always insisted was Jack Sparrow’s fatal flaw.  “Do you know what I dislike about you, Ragetti?” he asked.

“N-n-no, sir,” the frightened man managed. 

“You’re a coward, Ragetti.” The captain thumped Ragetti’s back into the bulkhead with the sharp pain of clashing teeth. “You terrorize those who are weaker than you to make yourself feel better about being afraid.”

“Y-y-yes, sir. I know, s-s-sir,” Ragetti was babbling now.  He hated himself for the waver in his voice.

“Do you know what the problem with a coward is?”

Shaking his head in a frantic negative, Ragetti tried to shrink even further away from his tormenter; however, the bulkhead refused to accommodate him.

“The problem with a coward is not that he can be made to fear you, but that he can be just as easily made to fear your enemies.  You were afraid of Barbossa, weren’t you?”

Having long since given himself up for a dead man, Ragetti whimpered softly.  He _had_ been afraid of Hector Barbossa, and he was now terrified of Jack Sparrow. “I’m sorry, sir,” he begged hopelessly.

“Pah!” Captain Sparrow grimaced in distaste. “You make me sick.” He abruptly let go of Ragetti, who folded to the deck as though he had no bones in his legs.  The captain paced across the room, then turned suddenly.

“Why did you decide to ask for a berth again on the _Black Pearl_?” he demanded.  “You’re an intelligent man, Ragetti.  You had to have known it was unlikely in the extreme that I’d take a traitor like you back.”

“I did know, sir,” Ragetti closed his eyes, feeling the despicable tell-tale damp at the edges of his lashes. “But Pintel said . . .”

“Belay that, Mister,” Captain Sparrow snapped. “I haven’t the slightest interest in why Pintel wants to be on my ship.  He’ll be telling me that, himself, shortly, I’m sure.  Now, I’m offering you one last chance to square with me.  If you tell me the truth, I may let you walk off my ship with your remaining eye and all of your limbs intact.”

Ragetti felt the first faint stirrings of a hope more agonizing than despair.  He opened his mouth.

“No.” Captain Sparrow forestalled him with a word.  “Think carefully about your answer.  I have no doubt you’re such a stranger to the truth that you wouldn’t recognize it if it came up and bit you!” He stared down at his cowering former crew member.  Then, more gently, he spoke, “Take your time, lad.”

That tiniest hint of kindness in the captain’s words nearly undid Ragetti. He was even less used to kindness than he was to truth.  The question was a test, he realized, and the only right answer was the answer he already knew—somewhere deep inside him.  Why _did_ he want this berth? For he knew that he had wanted it.  Still did, in spite of the fact that he was petrified by this unfathomable Captain Sparrow. Ragetti’s eyes remained closed, but he could hear the man pacing, could still picture him with every line of his body singing tense, his eyes dark with the bloodstained memories that lay like a sword between them.

The steps echoed on the deck. Heel to toe, heel to toe, pivot, and repeat.  As though, Ragetti realized with a flash of enlightenment, the brutal, cold, impervious façade were just a mask, as though this interview disturbed the captain more deeply than he’d let on, as though he also were vulnerable.  Ragetti had had enough of invulnerable captains to last him a lifetime, he decided. Those restless steps stilled something frantic in his own thoughts.

Carefully, as though thinking aloud, he attempted to explain.  “I came here because this seemed to be the only place that felt right—the only place where I belonged. I wanted to stay with Pintel.  He’s always been my only friend.  And he was right when he said this ship is our home.  She’s . . . I don’t know how to describe it . . . but she’s not just any ship.” He raised his eye to Captain Sparrow.  The man had stopped across the room and was staring at him as though he’d never seen him before. 

Emboldened, Ragetti exclaimed impulsively, “ _You_ know.  I _had_ to come back to the _Black Pearl_.  She doesn’t let you go.”

The captain’s face gentled in a way Ragetti had never before observed. “I do know,” he said softly. 

The two men stared silently, measuringly at each other for long minutes. Finally, Captain Sparrow sighed. “All right, Mr. Ragetti. I will take you aboard the _Black Pearl_ as crewman for a trial period of six months subsequent to you signing the articles and subsequent to you giving me your word on whatever it is you hold sacred that I will always be able to turn my back on you. You have a problem with me, you bring it to my face.  If my shoulder blades start to itch, you’re overboard as fast as you can say Robert’s your uncle, savvy?”

Ragetti felt limp with relief, suffused with an unfamiliar feeling he finally identified as a nascent happiness. “Aye, Captain,” he breathed, and it was like a gift to be able to address a worthy man by that title, to have a place to belong and a purpose once again. “Thank you, sir.”

Then he found Captain Sparrow had extended his incongruously elegant hand.  Shyly, Ragetti held out his own bony awkward one.  They shook hands solemnly.  Sparrow’s sailor’s calluses met Ragetti’s own. 

“We have an accord,” his captain announced.  Then he pulled Ragetti to his feet. “C’mon.  As soon as you’ve signed, I’ll get Gibbs to show you where to stow your things. 

* * * * *

He’d been with the _Black Pearl_ and Captain Sparrow for over a year now.  Pintel, too—although his friend had never spoken about what had passed between himself and Jack Sparrow in his own private interview.  Certainly it had been something different than had happened to Ragetti.  Pintel had emerged looking like he’d been in a first rate mill, one eye swollen shut, a broken nose, several ribs cracked, and a shoulder dislocated.  It hadn’t been a one-sided beating, however.  The captain had sported a colourful swelling on one sharp cheekbone and had favoured a leg for several days.  Whatever the circumstance of that fight, it had seemed to clear the air between the two of them, for Pintel was far more at ease with Sparrow than Ragetti was even yet. 

Ragetti still felt like an outsider amongst the _Pearl_ ’s crew.  His role in the mutiny against Jack Sparrow might have been branded on his forehead.  The fortunate men free of that stigma despised those who had committed the crime.  The first mate, who held a grudge until it died of old age and achieved immortality, particularly seemed to go out of her way to make Jack’s former crew members aware of the depths of their expendable status.  Her attitude didn’t bother Pintel.  After his initial horror at not only finding a woman aboard the ship but one giving orders, he’d admitted, with a certain amount of admiration, that he’d never served under a first mate with more vitriol in her tongue than Anamaria, nor, more grudgingly, one with a better grasp of what needed to be done on a ship. 

But Anamaria simply scared Ragetti.  He avoided her when possible and did his best to do his work so that it never came under her scrutiny.  The scorch of her regard could send him up the terrifying ratlines faster than flames to the soles of his feet ever had when he’d first been pressed as a sailor.

Now he found himself on his mettle in this hour of his ship’s most desperate need.  It seemed a man could simply become exhausted from terror.  The ordeal had sapped him of all ability to react to further disasters. He’d been absolutely convinced that he would die the death by drowning that had haunted his nightmares ever since he’d set foot on the unwieldy decks of sea-going vessels.  But then the great-hearted _Black Pearl_ had pulled them all from that watery grave.  Never had there been such a ship—not the Argo, not one of the fleet of Odysseus, not the dragon-headed Viking raiders, nor any other of the storied ships on history’s purple pages. Ragetti was living in a legend. 

Which simply meant he’d been brought to the point where he had nothing left to give. Had the members of the Argosy ever felt so?  He was down to his last dregs of fear, of strength, of courage.  He’d reached the place where he actually wanted to lapse into the oblivion of the sea, but his frenzied desire for approval and his fear of disgracing himself in front of the other men drove him on.  Even now, he and his mates were climbing towards a catastrophe that would surely claim one or more of their lives. 

The wind pried at his body like the hand of the devil. Screaming and shrieking, it drowned all sound, turning his shipmates’ shouts into silent lip movements. The blisters on his hands burst and burned like fire as he fought to ride out the wrenching oscillations of the mast between sea and sky.  The taste of danger was dry in his mouth. Far below him the marauding waves swallowed the _Black Pearl_ until only her raised poop and forecastle decks showed above the abstract swirls of sea and windblown foam.  Raindrops drove against his face like blinding missiles until he had to duck his head to breathe.   

Above his head, the lethal spar shipped violently from side to side so close he could feel the wind of its passage in his hair.  Ragetti gave a small whimper of fear that he couldn’t even hear himself.  Still, he inched out on the jumping footropes of the mizzen topsail yard.   The next time the topgallant yard lunged by him, Ragetti threw himself in desperation and terror up out of the ropes, unsupported by anything except his thighs braced against the yard and the steady weight of the wind on his body, and flung a bowline at the runaway spar. 

Not knowing whether he had got the loop onto the end or not, he dived for the mast and whipped the standing part of his line around it.  The sudden jerk as the flying yard brought up tore into his shoulders and back with astonishing pain.  But somehow, he hung on, absorbing the shock of its swing to leeward.  He almost slipped off the footropes, teetering on the edge of the abyss, but someone reached him and grabbed his ragged shirt, hauling him back. 

The danger was not past, but his actions had slowed the yard enough for the others to heave themselves at it and tie it off, lashing it tight to the topgallant mast and shrouds.  It was all Ragetti could do to hang on and wait for the task to be accomplished.  Then someone—he couldn’t focus on who—helped him climb down, shoulders burning, muscles trembling.

Finally, miraculously, he was on the deck of the ship again, his legs shaking so he could barely stand. Bewildered and dizzy, he felt the captain’s arm about his shoulders, supporting him.  The captain’s!  Jack Sparrow’s jubilant smile flashed like a glimpse of the sun, chasing away the bone-chilling cold of wind and rain.  Suddenly Ragetti could no longer feel the intense ache in his arms nor the sharp daggers slicing his back.

“Well done, Ragetti!” the captain exclaimed. “Good work, mate.”

Ragetti would never, for the rest of his life, forget those words or that smile. He basked in the unfamiliar warmth of a human touch that was not a blow.  For once, the grin he returned to the captain was neither apologetic nor cringing.  It spread over his face in pure happiness.

As he raised his head in euphoric courage, Ragetti’s eye snagged on Anamaria’s dark gaze.  For the first time since he had come aboard the _Black Pearl_ over a year ago, the first mate was actually looking at him as though he were really there.

* * * * *

The runaway yard was contained.  Even now Jack’s men were at work with desperate haste to re-rig it and reattach it.  Others were hauling the long bundles of sails on deck, tons of already wet canvas that they would somehow have to raise up to the empty yards.  Out on those spars still more men ran aloft the gantlines for drawing up those sails, bending them onto the yards.  The fury of the sea was subsiding as the _Black Pearl_ drew away from the mouth of the harbour into the ordinary swell of the storm.

Time had run out.

The Navy brig was almost upon them. 

Captain Sparrow gave the orders for his helmsmen to let the _Pearl_ run free.  Their brief respite was at an end. The decks were a flurry of frantic motion as men trimmed her few sails to the ideal angles, seeking to give the _Pearl_ her best speed. In flight lay her only chance.

The captain paced along the windward rail by the break in the poop, his glass fixed on the oncoming vessel.  He could see her gun crews readied on her main deck, her sharpshooters climbing to her foretop. In a matter of moments the _Pearl_ would be coming under her fire.

Lowering the glass, Jack surveyed his ship.  Lovingly he followed the perfect sweep of her decks, the elegant lift of her bow.  He was struck again, with a force that nearly staggered him, how infinitely beautiful she was.  The sweet run of her lines, her delicately penciled masts and gracefully tapering spars entranced him anew. 

His ship.  His _Black Pearl_. 

Jack Sparrow had belonged to her, body and soul, from the moment he’d first set eyes on her.  She spoke to him in his dreams and sang to him every waking hour of his life.  She had set him free.  The entire world had spread out before them, an azure carpet fit for royal adventure.  But he had failed her twelve years before—lost her to that bastard Barbossa, abandoned her to cursed madness, left her a slave to violence and greed.  He had sworn, when he got her back, that he would never be parted from her again. They would sail together beyond the fire-kissed sunsets, they would wash in the all the baths of southern stars and dance soul-free under swirling northern lights, and they would chase the glowing dawn down the horizon.  But now he did not know whether he could save her, or whether he had already failed her once more. 

Reaching out to her, he brushed the backs of two fingers along her rail, a gesture fierce and tender, as though he touched the cheek of a lover.

“I’m sorry, love,” he whispered. “I’m so sorry.”

* * * * *

Anamaria found him there by the rail, again assessing the approach of their adversary.

Jack pocketed the glass and turned to her.  “Anamaria.”

She raised an inquiring brow at him.

To her surprise, he did not say anything for a moment, just held her eyes with that seriousness he usually buried so deep it was always a shock to see it. Finally he spoke, so she could barely hear him above the noise of the ship, “This is not a good situation.”

Anamaria eyed him incredulously. “You tellin’ me somethin’ I don’t bloody know?” she scoffed.

But Jack was having no more banter. “Ana.” His earnestness froze her.

“What?” she snapped. She did not want to hear whatever it was that brought that tone to Jack Sparrow’s voice.

“I have a request to make.” He moved towards her. She noticed he was trailing his hand along the ship’s rail again. Turning away, he gazed out to the ragged horizon, beyond the Navy ships, before he replied.  “If the worst should happen . . .”

“Jack.” Anamaria tried to stop him, tried to keep him from putting into words her fears, as if somehow that would make them more real. But of course she failed. Jack could get more words in edgewise when a body wanted him to shut up than anyone else she knew.

“I’m just sayin’,” he shrugged, still not looking at her. “If there’s any reason I can’t do it, you have to take the _Pearl_.  Get her out of here, Ana.”

“Nothin’s goin’ t’ happen t’ you,” Anamaria retorted angrily.

But Jack was already shaking his head ruefully, a half laugh in his voice. “Now lass, y’ know I’m the one the Navy is really after.  Those marines in Norrington’s tops’ll be out for my blood.  And I’m not particularly inconspicuous.”

“Damn it, Jack Sparrow!  You shut the hell up!” She hated it when he dismissed his life so casually.

Jack turned back to her, holding up his free hand placatingly. “All right.  I’ll say no more.  But promise me you’ll take care of my ship if . . .” he broke off at the look in her eyes.  Finally, he simply held out his hand to her. “Please.”

Not trusting herself to say anything, Anamaria stared at his hand as though memorizing every grimy callus and broken nail. In spite of being the captain, Jack had a fo’c’sle hellion’s hands.  Couldn’t give up working his ship any more than he could give up commanding her.  Except—he just had.  Offered her the command of the _Black Pearl_.  It wasn’t the normal way the captaincy passed in a pirate crew—but then nothing had ever approached normal about Jack and his ship. Every man had signed to this crew knowing that a man voted with his feet on the _Black Pearl_. This ship had one captain, and if a crewman didn’t approve of him, he could jump ship at the next port.  Jack Sparrow and the _Black Pearl_ were not two separate entities. 

Frankly, Anamaria didn’t think the ship would even be manageable without her captain.  Anamaria had had enough of trying to sail the _Pearl_ without Jack the one time she had tried it.  But Jack was looking at her with a naked desperation she had never seen in him before.  She really sincerely hoped he would never ask her to sell her soul to the devil.  One look in that man’s eyes when he dropped all his masks and she was lost every time.

And so, against her better judgment, she nodded silently and took his hand.   His grip tightened once.

“Thank you, love,” he said softly.

* * * * *

The awful, eternal moment, just before battle, had struck. The _Black Pearl_ was racing towards her intersection with the Navy brig, her peace almost at an end. 

Captain Jack Sparrow stood at the helm of his ship. He wasn’t actually handling the wheel; Cotton was managing it fine.  But he needed to touch her. 

“Raise her colours, lad.” Jack nodded to Jip without glancing at him.  His eyes never left the approaching warship.

Solemnly, an unnatural condition for the boy, Jip carried the dark bundle to the line which it would be run up.  For a minute, all work on the _Pearl_ ceased, and men watched with a sense of ceremony. The only sounds on the ship were those she made herself and the violent caresses of the wind and the sea.

Above the snarl of wind, the knocking of blocks, and the thunder of flailing canvas being bent on too late, Jack heard the valiant snap of the black flag as it rose in defiance.  The Royal Navy captains would see in that spectral grin and crossed sabers the _Black Pearl_ ’s refusal to ask for quarter.  This was their commitment, the mark of their courage, fidelity and love, the sign of their determination to defend their ship to the last extremity and to lay down their lives in preference to shameful surrender. 

They sailed under the banner of King Death this day not because they were willing to kill for their prize—but because they were willing to die for it.

* * * * *

TBC

[](http://s15.photobucket.com/user/Honorat/media/Crossing%20the%20Bar/JackandAnamaria.jpg.html)


	8. Abandon Hope All Ye Who Enter Here

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The battle begins. For all of you who’ve been waiting for Norrington to take a shot at the pirates, and with apologies to all of you who’ve been hoping I wouldn’t do this.

The shrilling of the boatswain’s pipe and the staccato drill of snare drums beating the crew to quarters vibrated above the roar of the storm that sank its teeth into the reefed topsails and rigging of the _Dauntless_.  As the great ship shrugged her shoulders through the heavy seas, her entire crew leapt into action, the off duty watches boiling from their berths, the thunder of boots rumbling up out of the hatches, the thud of bare feet running on decks and companionways.  The sounds never failed to reach a fist into Commodore Norrington’s gut and take a half twist. For good or ill, he was sending his ship and his crew into combat.  The wheel had been spun, and it remained to be seen whom Fortune would favour.  For the first time, he was taking the _Dauntless_ up against the _Black Pearl_ when Jack Sparrow would have no choice but to engage instead of whirling his fleet ship, spitting insulting stern chasers, and lighting off for the horizon.  He had no idea how that daft pirate would respond to this checkmate. There was nothing but the legend of terror left by Barbossa on which to base his estimate of that dark ship’s abilities in pitched battle. _Damnation!_ How he hated working blind! 

He paced the quarterdeck, the familiar orders rapid-firing like pistol cracks, oblivious to the pitch and roll of his ship as she drove hard towards their quarry in the wake of the _Defender_ , ignoring the rain that was now annoyingly running inside his uniform into every nook and cranny of his body. 

“All hands clear the ship for action! Run out the port battery!”

Choruses of “Aye, sir’s” echoed as his commands were passed along.  Every sailor, every marine, every gunner hurried to his combat position. His men knew their grim work well.  The commodore could feel the tremors through the soles of his feet as the bulkheads on the two upper gundecks fell away, the gunports slammed open, and the hungry sakers sprang from their confinement. Rivers of bright red marines coagulated at their battle stations. Norrington could hear the gun crews straining against creaking tackles and handspikes to lever their charges into position. 

Down in the belly of the ship, powder monkeys scurried to the opening in the dampened woolen screen before the magazine entrance, carefully receiving the cloth-covered cartridges of black powder through it.  Once in possession of the perilous substance, they shielded the cartridges from rain and sparks within their jackets as they ran to their respective guns, beginning the stockpiles.

In the gray light flooding each of the gundecks, loaders rammed the death-dealing cartridges and shot into the smooth bores of the cannons—roundshot to hole the pirate ship’s hull and blast her decks, grape- and canistershot to chew her crew and sails to ragged shreds, even some chainshot from captured French vessels to crack her masts and pull down her rigging.  Commodore Norrington was not going to let 90 years of failed British Naval doctrine stand between himself and this prize.  Then the entire gun crews heaved their backs into the task of running out the grim black muzzles.  When the orders were given, they would train those well-blooded, pirate-hunting guns on the _Black Pearl_ and touch fire to that powder _._   Norrington observed the organized commotion with satisfaction. He had tested and tried these men, brought them through many fierce skirmishes, and he would be willing to wager there wasn’t another crew in the Royal Navy that could match them for speed and accuracy.

He had men to spare for these tasks since the lower gunports would have to remain closed during this engagement. The loss of those 32-pounders was regrettable.  The more lead he could pound into that ship from farther away, the greater his chances of success in this venture.  However, at thirty yards even his 18-pounders would be sufficient to drive round shot through a yard or more of hardwood.  That range would unfortunately work just as well for Sparrow.  Most pirates did not sail large, heavily-armed vessels.  In this, as in so many other things, Sparrow was the exception.  The _Pearl_ bristled with twenty guns to a side, and all of her starboard battery could be run out on her windward flanks as she heeled hard over.  With the weather gage, the _Dauntless_ would be burying her lower ports in the heavy seas. She might be forced to meet the _Pearl_ on nearly equal terms if they could only utilize her top two decks.  

In preparation for what the commodore feared would be very warm work, the wardrooms were being cleared to receive the wounded and dying, and the ship’s surgeon, Samuels, was laying out his instruments. The sanded decks awaited the wash of blood.

The commodore’s responsibility.  This was the price James Norrington had agreed to pay when he had accepted this commission.  He had paid it before and doubtless would again very soon, now. The commodore knew he would have to close with the _Pearl_ if he hoped to take her.

With swift grace Norrington ascended the steps to the poop deck in order to confer with his helmsmen.  “Mr. Mickel, Mr. Arrington, as soon as the _Black Pearl_ makes it past the _Defender,_ I want you to come up on the wind and lay us alongside her. Get as close as we can afford in these seas.” 

The stage was nearly set for this epic clash of Titans.  One thing remained for him to arrange—stationing the men whose duty would be to trim sails for battle maneuvering and to clear the _Black Pearl_ ’s decks with musket fire in close action. That would be a task best delegated to his first lieutenant.

As though reading his commanding officer’s mind, the young man materialized at his side. His eyes shone with that fey light they always had before combat. His stillness seemed to overlay a seething energy.

“Sharpshooters to the top, Gillette,” Norrington ordered.

“Aye sir.” Gillette nodded briskly. He turned and shouted for the marine sergeant, but discovered the canny man already approaching him.

“Ah, Bevington. Just the man I was looking for,” the lieutenant said. “Take your section to the maintop.”

“Aye, Lieutenant.”  The sergeant turned, intent on carrying out his orders.

Norrington hesitated a moment, undecided.  Then he took a half-hitch on his determination and hauled in tight.  If they were going to do this at all, then they must do it right.

“Mr. Bevington.”

His words halted the marine sergeant. Gillette, too, pivoted back and raised a curious brow.

“Aye, sir?” Bevington responded.

Duty demanded he do this.  Norrington took a deep breath.  This was war, after all.  He reminded himself that he was eliminating a pirate threat, not betraying an acquaintance.  Steadily, as though it meant nothing to him how a man died, he gave the orders.  “The pirate captain—Jack Sparrow—tell your men to look for him at the helm of the _Black Pearl_. He is often there when the going gets heavy.”

It was done.  Norrington let out his breath. After all, it was not unlikely that Sparrow’s sharpshooters would have instructions to keep a sharp eye out for the commodore.

Bevington tipped him a quick salute.  “Aye, sir. I’ll let ‘em know.”

The man trotted off to fulfill his given duties.  Norrington and Gillette exchanged sober glances.  Gillette gave a short understanding nod.  He knew this had never been an easy hunt for the commodore.

Letting his breath out slowly, Norrington attempted to speak more briskly.  “Lieutenant, you’ll be leading the boarding party should one become necessary.  See that the marines are furnished with pikes, cutlasses, and pistols.”

“Of course, Commodore.” Lieutenant Gillette’s expression intensified.  It was no enviable job to meet desperate men, hand to hand, in the cramped quarters of a ship, but a victory would likely bring him the captaincy of the prize. And a pirate ship such as the _Black Pearl_ would likely be a rich prize indeed. Norrington noticed a hungry look in Gillette’s eyes. Good. He couldn’t ask for a more motivated commander for this expedition.

When the lieutenant had departed, Norrington stared after him. He prayed that this battle would take as little human toll as possible.  He prayed that his men would live.

* * * * *

“I’m not giving orders on this one, gentlemen,” Captain Sparrow announced, standing alone at the break of the poop deck, the wind whipping his rain-drenched great coat and dashing his ornamented hair against his face.  He brushed the wild strands aside, but they promptly returned, leaving stinging marks on his skin. “This is a job for volunteers.” 

The crew selected to bend on the sails tossed uneasy glances back and forth amongst themselves. They’d hauled the tons of bundled sails up on the decks.  They’d bent on the gantlines and attached them to those sails.  But who, in his right mind, would choose to crawl out on the ends of those bucking yards in order to attempt to attach the head earrings?  Standing on the footropes was one thing—body braced against a yard and pressed against it by the wind. Perching, straddled on a narrow yard end with one leg hooked around the brace and the other swinging in space as the ship tried to lay down into the sea and the wind strove to tear away that fragile connection between man and spar was an entirely different matter.  Fortunately Jack Sparrow specialized in talking people out of their right minds.

The captain did not resist the silence with impatience. Instead, he watched his men, seeing the reluctance that was born of real self-doubt, sifting it from the paralyzing fear. He did not need men forced against their will on this deadly task.  What the undertaking required was sheer gritty determination. It called for men who would take their fear in their teeth and crush it, drawing strength from its blood.  He needed men who understood at the bottom of their souls that every man died once and what mattered was the way of it and not the when.  He needed men who saw their deaths in those two ships nearly upon them now, and who were willing to pay the price to give the rest of their mates a chance.  He needed men who were just a touch mad. And above all he needed men on whom Fortune smiled. 

He grinned at the pale faces, etched with exhaustion and dread. “Anyone feelin’ ‘specially lucky today?” he asked whimsically. 

The first man to step forward was Requin. He looked as if half of him wanted to back up and run, but he stood his ground.

“Wind in your sails, eh lad?” Captain Sparrow asked, the corners of his mouth curving up.

Requin took a deep breath. “Aye, sir,” he said almost firmly, pressing his lips together.

The captain gripped him by the shoulder and nodded. “Good man.” Keeping a supporting hand on the boy, Jack scanned the rest of his men. “Anyone else willing to keep him company?”

No one was more astonished than Ragetti himself when he raised a tentative hand and joined Requin.  He was still afraid. His arms still felt the burn of that breakaway yard. But he was really undamaged. Pain could be ignored. He only knew he would do anything for a chance at approval again. 

Captain Sparrow lifted a quizzical eyebrow. This development was certainly unexpected.

“Y’ great blitherin’ idiot!” Pintel hissed, cuffing Ragetti on the arm. “Now look what ye’ve done t’ us! One bloody big save, an’ ye think ye’re a blasted hero!”

“I-I-I’m s-s-sorry,” Ragetti began, cringing back in the old way.

“Don’t be,” Jack Sparrow told him. “You _are_ ‘a blasted hero,’ Ragetti. Go up there and give ‘em hell. And Pintel,” he turned to the shorter man, “it’ll do you good to follow _him_ for once.” Jack eyed the stocky pirate critically, with a crinkle of amusement at the corners of his eyes. “Ye look like ye could use the exercise, mate.”

With three men offering to take the dangerous yard ends, Captain Sparrow quickly filled the other three positions.  Courage could be as contagious as fear. He had five square sails to hoist, but only one could go up each mast at a time.

Addressing his intrepid crewmembers, he ordered, “As soon as the men on the capstan haul that canvas up, you’ll stretch out the sails along the yards.  The rest of you,” he turned to the others who would remain on the footropes, “light out the heads of the sails to them. When you’ve got ‘em tied up to the jackstays, the fun begins.”

The men exchanged wry glances. That could have been irony, but their captain probably would consider hanging about like a monkey in the rigging in the midst of a tempest to be fun. Too bad the man had broken ribs.

“Somehow,” Jack continued, “you’re goin’ t’ have t’ reeve and lead the running rigging before those sails shred themselves or take off for Calcutta. Every sail that goes just has to be run up again, so try to keep them in one piece.  If that works, and I mean _if_ , all sheets, braces, tacks and clew lines will have to be attached. They ain’t goin’ t’ want t’ be, if y’ know what I mean,” he snorted.

His crew rolled their eyes or shrugged, depending on their characters. Anamaria just shook her head and winced. Crazy, futile action was vintage Jack Sparrow.

The captain turned as if he were finished, then pivoted back, waving his hand in afterthought. “Oh, and since our dear friends, the Royal Navy, will be trying to shoot you out of the trees, do your best to duck, and don’t let go of the ship.”

“We’ll do our best, Cap’n,” the grizzled Quartetto grimaced.

“Can’t ask more’n that,” Jack agreed.  “Now off with you. Scoot.” He flapped an arm at them, his hand waving delicately. “Don’t forget to stay alive.”

* * * * *

“Commodore.”

Norrington turned to see Groves waving a spyglass in the direction of the pirate ship.

“Commodore, you should take a look at this,” his second lieutenant called. 

As Norrington raised his own instrument, cursed, wiped the rain off the glass, raised it again and tried to focus on the pirate ship, Groves continued. “Sparrow is actually trying to bend on canvas in this gale, sir.”

Squelching the word “Impossible” with the resigned sense that it would never have any real application where Jack Sparrow was concerned, Norrington looked for himself.

Like fragile leaves on wind-lashed branches, Sparrow’s crewmen were clinging to the bare yards, dancing on the slippery, plunging footropes, reaching for the already furled sails being drawn up the masts, as spars might be, by the men on the capstan. Of all the insane, unlikely, ridiculous plans! It was not improving the commodore’s mood to realize that it just might work.  Even as he watched, a tumble of canvas thunder-cracked from the _Pearl_ ’smain topsail yard, raging against the storm in self-destructive fury, forcing the pirates to battle it in a grim tug-of-war between their own survival and that of the sail.

How Sparrow had managed to force his men out on the ends of those whipping yards in that raving tempest, Norrington could only imagine. He must have had to threaten to shoot them—given them the option of certain death versus merely very likely death.

Whatever the means, the end was obvious. The _Black Pearl_ was attempting the unattainable. Sparrow was going to run. He wasn’t going to succeed.  The _Dauntless_ would be on him before he had a chance to fill those new sails. But the magnificence of that effort quite took one’s breath away.

“I see,” he muttered, pocketing his glass.

Groves had that glowing look of admiration about him again, Commodore Norrington noticed grumpily.

“That’s got to be . . .” the man began.

“Stop it right there, lieutenant, unless you want to be broken back to midshipman!” Norrington snapped. “I don’t want to hear it.”

Groves grinned unrepentantly at his commanding officer. “Aye, sir. I’ll not bruise your tender sensibilities any longer. But forgive me for saying, sir, a hunter is allowed to appreciate the beauty of the stag.”

Norrington raised an eyebrow. “And just how much poaching _did_ you do in your misspent youth, Mister Groves?”

“New World deer, sir,” his second lieutenant assured him virtuously. “Venison is a treat after months of salt horse and weevils—with a side dish of rat.”

“Go away, lieutenant,” Norrington shook his head with fond impatience.  “Surely I’ve given you more than enough to do.”

“Aye, sir.” Groves saluted merrily and jogged off. No amount of rain or repressive superiors or bloody great black pirate ships with forty some guns could quench that young man’s enthusiasm. 

Commodore Norrington huffed a resigned laugh.

The commodore’s attention returned to the labouring pirate ship.  He pulled out his glass and trained it again on his enemy, feeling an empathetic speeding of the pulse at the completely mad, utterly valiant battle of the pirates out on those yards. Then a flicker of black and white caught his eye. Switching his focus, he watched the wind spread the scrap of fabric that had signaled terror across the Caribbean—the skull and crossed sabers of the _Black Pearl_ ’s ensign.  After that crossing of the bar, he hadn’t really expected Sparrow would surrender without a fight, but the evidence of that determination still had the ability to race his heart.

This was it. This would be the first real cross of blades between himself and Jack Sparrow since that aborted hanging. The first match between the _Dauntless_ and the _Black Pearl_.  The gauntlet had been thrown. In minutes, it would be picked up. The _Defender_ was already sending aloft her meteor flag.

“Mr. Hastings,” Norrington lowered his glass and turned to one of the midshipman on the lee of the quarterdeck, “run up her colours.”

He squinted up into the rain as the red and white explosion on the blue field rattled up its line.  This was their answer to Sparrow’s challenge—their firm commitment to tolerate no piracy, to spend their lives to protect the ships and shipping of the British Empire whatever the cost, and to fight to the bloody end to eliminate all threats to law and order.   This was the emblem of his duty, the symbol of the ideals to which he had dedicated his life.  Commodore Norrington drew fresh resolve from the ensign’s bright spark of colour against the gray sky.

* * * * *

Captain Sparrow remained motionless beside the _Black Pearl’_ s helm, aware with every nerve and sinew of the changes going on around him as his crew contended with the tons of soaked canvas. The men sweating up those sails were repeatedly compelled to cease hauling, belay the lines and jump for the lifelines or rigging as the decks flooded with tons of overpowering water. They swam as much as they walked. The tiny figures out on her yards seemed every moment to be almost flung into the sea.

However, the captain never took his eyes off the approaching brig.  The _Black Pearl_ dwarfed her smaller opponent, but the little warship resembled nothing so much as an eager hound, closing in for the jugular of a great stag at bay.  Or perhaps she was like the sharks he’d seen take down massive whales, sleek and deadly, all teeth and razored hide.  She sliced through the high seas, an assassin’s blade aimed for his heart, her spars like crosses, masts raked forward as she ran under reefed topsails before the wind, rushing up the backs of waves and plunging down their glassy slopes amidst curtains of silver spray. So bloody beautiful.

When would she strike?

He was not going to be able to avoid letting her rake the _Pearl_ ’s bow.  He could only hope the wind and the waves would limit the damage she could do before they were past.  He knew that the Royal Navy captain had to be expecting the _Pearl_ to rake his stern with her overwhelming broadside as soon as she had sailed by; nevertheless, the man showed no hesitation. The gallant brig drove on.

If only he could grant his lady her wings! But even though his crew had just let fall her foretopsail and mainsail, want of tacks and sheets rendered them almost useless.

There was only an instant of warning when the mists of spray and rain that blurred the outline of the Navy brig lit carmine and gold and then plumes of smoke swallowed her entirely.

Her first shots were wide of the mark.  The sea boiled with their impact. But then she drew in range.

“Down! All hands down!” shouted the lookout Jack had sent up to the crosstrees.

Then the rumble of firing guns trembled the _Pearl’_ s deck.

The men hauling the lines to raise canvas dropped as though already struck.  The deck resounded with the thud of their bodies.  Those crewmen, unprotected aloft, grabbed hold with everything they had and hugged the yards.  And then the world blew apart.  Shards of rail and deck plates, splinters of deadly wood, joined iron projectiles in spraying across the _Pearl’s_ decks.  Shots cut away ropes and pierced wind holes through her sails.

Jack clenched one bone-whitened hand around the handle of his ship’s helm, his face twisted in a bare-teethed snarl.

* * * * *

Aboard the _Dauntless_ , Commodore Norrington forgot to breathe.  His eyes burned with the strain of watching the _Defender_ challenge the infamous _Black Pearl._

Walton was double- and triple-shotting his guns, making the most of his brief opportunity to rake the vulnerable bow of the _Black Pearl_ with his thundering broadsides.  Norrington could hear those cannon roaring death into the _Pearl_ ’s unprotected hull, the shot howling down the length of her decks, mowing down anything in its path, gouging 300 foot sprays of lethal splinters out of her planking.

However, no answering spurts of crimson fire spat back from the _Black Pearl_ ’s bow chasers.  Her gunports remained resolutely fastened down.  Her weatherdeck cannons crouched still and impotent in their restraints.  He could only guess that something must have happened to her powder magazine.

Defenseless. Dear God! That ship was defenseless!

Never, in his most unachievable dreams had Norrington imagined such a scenario.  The Royal Navy would not be fighting the _Black Pearl_ this day, after all.  It was to be a hunt and a slaughter.  No wonder Sparrow was risking the lives of his crew to crack on all possible canvas to his crippled ship!

The commodore turned, a cold chill that had little to do with the wind on his rain- and spray-soaked uniform, prickling his neck. He prayed he never had to experience what Sparrow must be enduring now, facing a first rate ship of the line and an agile brig with a wounded and weaponless vessel.  But he could not afford to imagine too precisely the carnage happening at the moment nor that which was to come—not if he wanted to do his duty as he must.  Norrington turned away from the sight of the tragedy being enacted before his eyes, the weight of his obligations crushing sharply into his shoulders. 

Tactics and strategy. This was a question of tactics and strategy, not blood and bone.  This was a question of duty and responsibility. 

He had to order his men to wedge the fronts of half the gun carriages. The others would strike below the waterline to sink the pirate ship. There would be no point in aiming for her gundecks. Sparrow had all his men on her sails.

* * * * *

In the absence of the _Pearl_ ’s batteries of guns detonating, the concussive explosions of battle seemed muted, somehow, as though Jack were hearing them under water or from a greater distance.  Every jolting impact that rippled the plates under his feet sent a resonating bolt through his heart. It had been so long since he’d had to force a ship to endure this kind of punishment.  Jack Sparrow had always counted on the intimidation wielded by his dark lady and her reputation to castrate his victims’ will to fight. And when he had faced any opponent who had the ability and the resolution to really inflict damage, he had relied on the _Black Pearl_ ’s fleet cloud of canvas to outrace the fire. 

This time he had no choice. His ship could neither run nor fight.

She shuddered around him again and again as the 12 pound roundshot slammed into her hull, blasting her railings, gashing her decks.  She cried out with the voices of his men as grapeshot and shrapnel and flying slivers hailed across her decks, shredding into flesh, flinging bodies through the air with the heart-stopping bonelessness of puppets.  Up on her yards his men fought to bend on new sails to provide her with the wings she needed to flee this horror.  But around them whispered the deadly silken flights of the shot from Naval sharpshooters trying to pick them off.  Their only salvation was the storm.  With both ships climbing the tall slab-sided seas and rushing into the troughs, twisting and rolling, any sort of aim was next to impossible.

Jack could feel his brave ship fighting around him, rearing up her bowsprit to take shots that would damage her hull far less than her fragile crew, swinging her spars like a flinching horse away from the stinging shots that sought to drop her crew to her decks or the raging seas. But she could not save them all.

Each green sea that shipped over her decks washed up red in her scuppers.

The ache in his chest was beyond the pain of broken ribs, the sting in his eyes more than the effect of smoke and salt spray.  The water on his face was—rain.

* * * * * 

TBC

 


	9. A Special Providence in the Fall

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The battle continues.

Amidst the pounding of cannon fire, the _Black Pearl_ bore down on the Navy brig like an enraged tigress. Cotton held her helm steady amidships, as Jack had instructed, refusing to turn aside from their fatal course. On his shoulder, his parrot flapped and cursed in three different languages as grapeshot ploughed into the deck and splinters exploded around them. Beside him the captain was keeping up with the parrot in three other languages on general principle.  If he could keep his crew and his ship intact for a few more minutes they would either be past that brig or a permanent part of her stern ornamentation.

Gibbs appeared at Jack’s shoulder looking sour—an expression into which his features relaxed like comfortable furniture. 

“What’s her condition?” Jack called to Gibbs above the crashing chaos. He knew his ship was holed below the waterline, but Gibbs had been sent to check on specifics.

“She’s already taken eight shots between wind and water on her bow, Captain,” Gibbs reported, his hand cupped around his mouth to channel the sound into Jack’s ear. “Four of ‘em have breached her hull some three feet under water, and there’s like to be more before she’s done. Water’s comin’ in what looks to be ‘bout nine feet an hour.”

 “She’s goin’ to be as full of holes as a sea urchin shell by the time we make it past the _Dauntless_ ,” Jack shouted. “We’ll never be able to repair her or to pump fast enough, so we’ve got to fother her.”

Gibbs decided that Jack Sparrow was even crazier than advertised if he thought they’d be making it past that man-of-war with that much of the _Pearl_ left, but he knew better than to say so.  “Aye, we got plenty o’ scuppered canvas,” he yelled back, noncommittally.

“I want every man down, at least who’s conscious and has use of his hands, set to work stitching the largest scraps together and sewing oakum and wool on those sails. Then get some crews together to use the smaller pieces for collision mats. Block up the worst of those holes.”

“Collision mats, aye.” Gibbs shook his head. It wouldn’t be the first time this day one of Jack’s outrageous ideas had saved them all.

As Gibbs turned to carry out Jack’s orders, the captain noticed that he was limping badly, his right leg darkened with the red stains of blood. Catching his attention again, Jack nodded towards the injury. “That serious?”

Gibbs grimaced. “Got caught by a bloody grommet torn from a clew by a shot,” he grumbled. “Stupid way to get hurt. I’ll live.”

“You get a minute, see that it’s taken care of,” Jack said.

“I promise you, Jack Sparrow,” Gibbs sighed loudly, “I’ve learnt my lesson.  When—if—I ever get ashore again, I am never goin’ t’ set foot in a bloody ship or a barque or a brig or even a jollyboat ever again!” He raised his hands to the weeping skies.  “God strike me dead if I do!”

 “Goin’ back t’ sleep with the pigs, eh?” Jack grinned. His eyes were strained, but you couldn’t strike down the irrepressible Sparrow with a first rate broadside of 32-pounders. Not for long, anyway.

 “You have no idea!” Gibbs said fervently. “At least they never tried t’ shoot me or drown me.”

 “Dead ahead!” shrieked the parrot, shifting about excitedly on Cotton’s shoulder.

Gibbs whirled to look and saw the little brig leap forward like a startled colt just enough for the  _Pearl’_ s bowsprit to clear. In a hail of shot, the  _Black Pearl_ drove past the stern of the Navy brig so close that her main yardarm broke the vangs of the warship’s gaff.

 “Yes!” Gibbs whooped, pumping a jubilant fist in the air. “That’ll learn ye, ye bloody bastards!” He tried to cut a jig, but his leg refused to cooperate. They might have no powder, but they’d done the enemy some damage.  And his itch to do some serious hurting on some Navy hide had gone unscratched for far too long.

 Jack understood Gibbs elation, but they weren’t safe yet.

He saw the letters carved across the stern of the little brig, just as she blasted off a salvo of her stern chasers. The  _Defender._ It was good to know her name. They were so close he could hear the orders of her captain and mates, see their resolute pitiless faces. Swivel guns and sharpshooters continued to target his crew as they drove by her, seeking again the relief of open sea, if only for a moment. The  _Pearl_ was heeled hard over, openly exposing her vulnerable decks to enemy fire. 

Silently Jack pleaded with his ship to run free of this hailstorm of death, but before the _Pearl_ could slip from the grasp of the _Defender,_ a round of shot slammed into her deck just before the binnacle.  Cotton and Jack crouched amidst a rain of hot lead and flying timbers. Beside him he could feel the helmsman hunched protectively around a bundle of blue feathers, while Jack tried to shield his face with his free arm. For a moment the ship sailed herself.

Curiously enough, it did not feel like pain when he was struck—just intense, violent pressure and a sensation of weightless flight.

Bright light in colours he had never before seen seared behind his eyes. Flavours he’d never tasted stung his tongue and burned in his nostrils. And a single note of unearthly music rang in his ears, drowning out the roar of battle, rising in volume and pitch until it blackened his sight.  She was singing to him, he thought muzzily. His _Black Pearl_. Then he fell into the darkness of her embrace, slamming up against cold metal.

From the far side of the world he could hear Gibbs calling his name, but it didn’t seem important. His hand scrabbled at the writhing deck of his ship and closed comfortingly around a wet shard of her decking. Pain began to prowl around his consciousness, seeking a weak point. Jack tried to be very still. That seemed important. Perhaps it would not notice him if he did not move.

He had one last thought before he had no more thoughts: _I didn’t know a parrot could scream._

* * * * *

Commodore Norrington watched with breath taut as storm-filled sails as his second ship barely escaped a collision with the _Black Pearl_.  The _Defender_ would suffer in maneuverability until they could make repairs, but such damage scarcely counted when compared with the normal results of a sea battle. Over all, their strategy had worked admirably. Walton had timed his attack to the second, doing the maximum possible injury to the pirate ship that wind and sea would allow. He hadn’t managed to take down her masts, but as the _Dauntless_ drew within range of the _Pearl_ , Norrington could see the gaping wounds in her hull and the shot-torn sails left by the brig’s cannon.

Now it was up to him to finish what Walton had begun. If Sparrow would not surrender, his ship must be halted and boarded or sunk.

The _Defender_ would keep the _Pearl_ pinned, while staying out of range of the _Dauntless_ ’s overshots, and Norrington would bring his massive broadsides to bear on the limping pirate ship’s undefended hull and spars.

This was it. The commodore nodded to his first lieutenant.

“Straight at her, Mr. Mickle, Mr. Arrington,” Gillette spoke to the helmsmen.

“Straight at ‘er, sir.”

“Close with her amidships.”

The _Dauntless_ began her swing to match pace with the _Black Pearl_. The whole ship sang with anticipation. His men, seeing that the pirates posed no real threat, were in high spirits.  He’d already overheard conversations in which the imaginary spoils of that ship were being spent several times over.

 “Note to the log, Mr. Sheffield. Engaged the enemy ship at six bells,” the commodore instructed.

The expanse of water between his ship and Jack Sparrow’s dark _Pearl_ was nearly closed. As the _Dauntless_ came about and the wind struck her starboard side, she heeled over into the huge seas. It was going to be difficult for his gunners to aim their weapons high enough.  Difficult, but not impossible.

“On my mark, fire as she rises. Concentrate on her main mast,” Norrington ordered. “I want that ship dead in the water.”

As Gillette passed the command along, he heard one gun captain holler, “Aye, sir! We’ll make a brig of her for you.”

* * * * *

“Captain’s down!”

The words crashed over the ship like a sea of despair.  For an instant the entire crew froze.  Anamaria spun towards the _Pearl’_ s helm, her mind ablaze with frantic denial. _Jack!_  

He wasn’t there.

Cotton, his right arm bloodied, still held the damaged helm, his parrot quivering and silent, pressed against his head, but Jack was neither beside him, nor anywhere she could see on the poop deck or quarterdeck.  Instead a few men clustered about a limp form jammed against the edge of a weather cannon carriage where the force of the blast had hurled it.

Jack.

She started to fly to his side, then stopped, torn by her duty.

“Anamaria!” she heard Gibbs bellow from where he was bent over the captain.  “You’ve got to take her! Get this bloody ship out of here!”

The massive Tearlach was bending down now and scooping up Jack’s body as though he were merely a child.  Through the gray sheets of rain, she saw red spreading on Tearlach’s torn sleeve where Jack’s head rested. One of his expressive hands hung limply, moving only with the pitch of his ship.

Jip, Anamaria noticed with the odd clarity of panic, was huddled under the companionway, knuckles to his teeth, his eyes wide and terrified as the captain was carried past him into the cabin.

“Peytoe!” Gibbs hollered. “Peytoe, ye bloody great lubber! Where is that thrice-damned cook?”

The man emerged, looking like a vision of nightmare, the gore of his secondary trade slicking his arms and soaking his clothing. He looked frightened and sick as he hurried after the captain. Anamaria tried to convince herself that it was a good sign they were calling for the closest thing to a doctor they had on the ship, but she wasn’t sure how much use Peytoe could possibly be. For a moment she wanted to join Jip in hiding, close her eyes, plug her ears, and make it all go away.

But the captain had made her promise to take care of his ship.  That was the only thing she could do for him now.  Somehow she managed to turn away from Jack, although the effort nearly severed her heart. The battered and bloody crew around her stared at her with eyes very much like Jip’s, an expression she was afraid mirrored her own.

She had to take command of the _Black Pearl_.  Somehow she had to restore to these men the fire that only Captain Jack Sparrow had lit in their bones.  Somehow she had to make them believe in the impossible again. It was up to her to save Jack’s ship and his crew.

“Alright my lads!” She put as much hope and enthusiasm into that call as she could dredge out of her soul, flinging her voice above the thunder of the sea. “Back t’ work y’ feckless pack of sea scum! We got a ship t’ sail here! Y’ remember how t’ do that, don’t you?  Are we goin’ t’ let those whoreson Navy dogs take Jack Sparrow’s _Pearl_?”

The angry roar following that suggestion fed her own courage. 

Anamaria began a rampage up and down the decks of the ship, slamming iron walls around her memories of the still figure of the captain, barricading all her feelings beyond her reach. With the lash of her words she drove the exhausted crew harder and faster in their race to repair the damage both from that crossing and from the Navy cannonade.  

They’d made it past the brig thanks to Jack’s suicidal nerve, but the opening of sea was rapidly narrowing between the _Pearl_ and the _Dauntless._  They’d soon be under the broadside of that first rate man-of-war bearing down under press of canvas. Their only hope was to crowd enough sails to outrun her. 

Gibbs joined her, answering her questioning look with a negative shake of his head and a shrug.  Anamaria clamped down on any reaction of her own.  With surprising ease, Gibbs took over the tasks of first mate, taking her orders and directing the crew in carrying them out as though they had always worked together.  He delegated men to assist the ship’s carpenter in fighting the leaks, then set any capable wounded in the wardroom to stitching sails. Anamaria felt an unaccustomed gratitude to the man.  They’d never gotten along all that well, but for the good of the ship they could cooperate.

She was overseeing the setting of the main topsail, when the one man they’d spared as lookout shouted the warning they’d all been dreading.

“She’s fired!”

Great tongues of dragon flame licked from the sides of the Navy warship, and the first of the _Dauntless_ ’s range-finding shots blossomed in the water off the _Pearl_ ’s starboard bow. 

* * * * *

Drawing up alongside the _Black Pearl_ , the _Dauntless_ reached out for her with her first broadside, hammering her with her upper deck guns, pouring destructive fire into her hull, spraying her decks with shot. 

In the smoke-filled hell of the _Dauntless_ ’s gun decks, men crouched tensely, stripped to their waists, neckerchiefs wound around their heads to deaden the noise as they served their muzzle-loaders. In rhythmic sequence each gun captain signaled for elevation, one hand on the taut trigger line that tripped the flintlock and sent the iron ball crashing into the enemy.  Each crew of half a dozen men then swabbed out the barrel, rammed home the powder and shot, and ran the guns back out, getting off a round nearly every two minutes in spite of the heaving deck. Powder monkeys scampered to and fro, cheered on by the third lieutenant’s “Well done, my lads!”

On the quarterdeck, Commodore Norrington watched grimly. This was going to be a long fight in spite of the inability of the enemy to fire back. Just when the _Dauntless_ would crest a wave and be in position to fire, she would find her shot piercing the backs of other seas, rather than the hull of the _Black Pearl._ Half the time those shots would ricochet into ineffectiveness. Of those shots that did get through, an amazing number still managed to land short or overshoot.  If he didn’t know better, he would have sworn that pirate ship was dodging his fire.  Unquestionably, not all the blows he landed had any effect on her.  He observed with wonder that solid shot bounced off her thick oaken sides as if she were armoured. Chain shot fouled her rigging, but so far not a single missile seemed to have touched her masts. The storm was certainly making aim difficult, but there was something uncanny about that ship’s ability to survive.

Again he marveled at the fantastic ship Jack Sparrow commanded. He hoped that mad bastard would surrender before he was forced to destroy her. What would it be like to possess such a vessel? However, as matters looked at the moment, he would very likely have to take her down. And take her down he would. All he had to do was to pound her long enough with sufficient fire. Even now, an adequate iron hail of large shot shook the pirate ship to her very keel, passing through her timbers, spraying her decks, and scattering the terrifying splinters that were even more deadly than the shot itself. His grape and canister shot poured over the _Pearl_ like leaden rain carrying death in their train. He could hear the higher pitched muskets fire from the tops as his marines targeted the men on her decks and spars.

She would either be a ghost ship or a sinking hulk by the time he was done with her, no matter how long it took.

* * * * *

Like an executioner, the _Dauntless_ escorted the _Black Pearl_ towards her death.  Grim and stately, her masts spearing the sullen sky, she restrained herself to the crippled pace of the smaller ship. Flickers of vermilion brightened her hull momentarily before she was wrapped in clouds of smoke. Geysers of water shot heavenward where shots fell short or high seas rose and swallowed them. But far too often her massive broadsides, flaming and crashing, smashed her shot home, pulverizing the timbers of her prey, badly holing her. Aboard the _Pearl_ , flying splinters snarled through the air, torn sails flapped, and cut rigging twanged and lashed. In the melee of terrible fire, blinding smoke, and dying men, the _Dauntless_ ’sguns roared ceaselessly.

Oh how badly Anamaria wanted firepower.  The urge to order the _Pearl_ ’s long guns rolled out, to aim them at their enemy, and to blast them to the ninth circle of hell wrenched at her gut like physical pain.  She would have traded her soul for dry powder, if she could have found anyone to trade it to.  Every shot the _Dauntless_ fired should be met with twice the destruction from the _Pearl._ The Royal Navy should pay for what it had cost her.  At this moment her deepest desire was to have her cutlass buried to the hilt in the corpse of that bloody commodore. 

Instead, she threw that fury against the crippling damage the _Pearl_ had suffered, ignoring the increasingly accurate curtain of fire from the vessel drawing up alongside them, throwing herself to the deck amidst the rain of hot lead and splintering shrapnel, leaping to her feet and forging on the minute she dared, her rage powering her determination that this ship would see open water before the _Dauntless_ could take her down.

A hand rested on her shoulder, detaining her.  Even as she was turning, her face set in a snarl of warning, a voice stopped her as though she’d been shot.

“I’ll take her from here, love.”

_Jack_! Her lips moved inaudibly over his name.  Whirling on him, she barely controlled the urge to throw herself into his arms.

“You bloody bastard!” she hissed. “Don’t you dare do that to me again!”

Captain Jack Sparrow grinned madly at her.  “I’ll grant you the ‘bloody,’ but my mother swore she was married to my father.” 

He looked terrible. The kohl around his eyes had smudged and run like the shadows of tears. All the rich colour had drained from his face, leaving him a paler shade of grey.  The red of his scarf looked dull and dark next to the bright crimson of the blood that covered one temple, matting in his dark hair, still spreading with the rain down his neck, staining his shirt and pooling in the hollow of his throat.

He had never looked more beautiful.

She noticed Jack was moving even more carefully than after his ribs had been broken, holding his head as still as he could. The dark wetness on his clothing, upon closer examination, was blood.

“That yours?” she asked. Surely it couldn’t be and him still standing.

“Not much,” he replied softly.

“You goin’ t’ live, then?” she asked him, congratulating herself on keeping her voice almost even-keeled. She wanted to touch him, to add the witness of her hands to the evidence of his warm life, but she didn’t.

“There’s always that chance,” he said.

“Then the ship is yours, and welcome to it,” she said in relief. “You can see, we’re just a mite busy at the moment.”

“Aye,” he said tightly. “Ol’ Norrington is makin’ things a trifle too warm, in’t he? You’d think I’d kidnapped his ma and raped his sister.”

“Maybe you should,” Anamaria snapped bitterly.

“Now lass, let’s not get too carried away here,” Jack soothed. “He’s a Navy man, ‘member?”

“I’m not like t’ forget!” She jerked her head towards the blue and gold battleship trying to rip them to shreds. Two men carried a third by them, his groans not drowning out the thud of drops of his blood hitting hard on the deck. Anamaria saw Jack’s fists clench.

“Well,” the captain explained, although his eyes were darker than ever with the knowledge of what his men and his ship were enduring. “When a man’s got the Navy stick that far up his arse, it interferes with his thought processes somethin’ fierce. He can’t help it. He’s more of a prisoner of ol’ Georgie than ever I was.”

Anamaria snorted. Jack could say what he wanted; she would cut Norrington’s throat in a church if she had the chance. For a pirate, Jack tended to grant people far too much slack. Anamaria preferred to take a second wrap around their throats with the standing end of her line.

“We’re pirates, love,” Jack said reasonably. “This was always a possibility.”

A pint-sized whirlwind flurry startled them before it resolved itself into Jip, clinging around the captain’s waist like a tide-pool starfish.

“Captain! I thought you were dead!” There was accusation in that tone, as well as a small sniff tagged on to the end, traitorously revealing that Jip was not perhaps as much of a man about all this as he’d like everyone to think.

Jack staggered back under the onslaught.  Anamaria saw him wince and heard his sharp intake of breath above the pandemonium surrounding them, but finding his footing again, the corners of his mouth turned up and he ruffled the damp head of his small worshipper with his free hand.

“It’ll take more than a whack on the head to do away with Captain Jack Sparrow, eh lad?” he said.

“That’s because you got nothin’ but rocks for brains,” Anamaria shot back, turning away from him to return to her duties—as mate. She hadn’t been happier to turn this ship over to Jack since the first time.

“So I’ve been told,” he called after her, and she could hear the smirk on his face.

Turning one last time to gloat privately over a temporarily safe if not too sound Jack Sparrow, she saw him peel the kid off and say, “C’mon, whelp. Let’s get our lady away from this mess.”

God, she was glad that madman was back in charge of the _Black Pearl._ If they had any chance at all for this crazy escape, he was it.

* * * * *

TBC

[](http://s15.photobucket.com/user/Honorat/media/Crossing%20the%20Bar/JipandJack.jpg.html)


	10. For Where We Are Is Hell

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Warning: This one is grim. VERY bloody. VERY painful. To call this angst is an understatement. To borrow a phrase from the 2nd Earl of Rochester: “You will not like me.” I really mean that T rating for violence. This one is not pretty in any way. We have reached rock bottom in this story. The stygian darkness of this chapter is epic. All I can say is that it is always darkest just before dawn.

As his cannons ripped into the flanks of the _Black Pearl_ , Commodore Norrington saw her falter, shuddering against the repeated blows.  The heavy missiles tore wide-open gashes in her sides and slashed through her sails; exploding grapeshot flayed her decks.  From the tops, his sharpshooters kept a steady bombardment of the pirates on her yards, trying to prevent them from bending on the sails that would allow her to flee.  Sparrow’s ship screamed her anguish.  Through the pall of smoke and rain, he could see her washports running red with blood, as though the _Black Pearl_ herself were bleeding into the sea.

 James Norrington had taken down pirate ships many times before.  Such sights and sounds were sufficiently familiar.  However, he had never felt so much like a butcher.  Usually he had the righteous justification that whatever the horrors his guns were perpetrating on the bodies of his foes, they were mild compared to the atrocities those men had committed on their victims. But the _Pearl_ ’s victims, while they complained of many things, did not complain of atrocities. Usually the other pirate ships were fighting back, _mano a mano_ as it were.  Fair game.  Not struggling silently and courageously to stumble away. He should be grateful that he was able to close with the dread _Black Pearl_ and yet be relatively sure he would not lose a man except by veriest accident.  And he was grateful, for his crew’s sake.  Nevertheless, the whole bloody business sickened him. This slaughter hardly counted as defeat of an honourable foe in glorious combat.  It seemed a travesty to treat such a ship so shamefully.

 He would do what he must, because it was his duty.  But he didn’t have to enjoy it. 

 * * * * *

 Jack Sparrow must have imagined they’d saved the _Black Pearl_ from that monster wave, for this was surely Hell, and they sailed through the sulfur and brimstone of the Devil’s own inferno. 

 His ship was caught in the heart of a tremendous storm of cannon fire.  Every lightning flash hurled from the _Dauntless_ ’s incessant guns brought a deafening roar that strewed the _Pearl_ ’s decks with the victims of its wrath. The _Dauntless’_ s broadsides were coming less than two minutes apart.  _Damnation!_  He hated crossing blades with the Royal Navy!

 The slaughter on his ship had become horrible.  The wardroom could hold no more wounded.

 The images of his injured and dying crewmen were branded onto the backs of Jack’s eyelids. He saw them whenever his eyes closed. Perhaps because he’d gradually become aware of them as he’d floated up from the depths of unconsciousness, those images had the disorienting quality of nightmare, illogical mosaics of smells and sounds and sights.

 The sounds had pierced their way into his consciousness first, riding the blades of the knives that were stabbing his skull. The thudding concussion of roundshot battering through his ship’s hull. The gut-wrenching cries of wounded men. The grate of a blade carving through bone. Screams he would never get out of his ears. A deep voice moaning, “Oh my God! Oh my God!” over and over again.

 Smells had assaulted his nostrils next. Sulfur and saltpeter, hot metal and burnt wood, saltwater and rain, all overlaid with the stench of blood and bile and excrement until he could taste them, his stomach roiling.

 Sight had remained his most unreliable resource. He’d tried to open his eyes, but the whirling pinwheels of dark and candlelight had fractured his brain into outraged agony. The gradually solidifying pictures that emerged as his body adjusted to the pain remained fragmented. The spurt of glistening red blood flying from a severed artery. The bruised and twisted devastation of a broken leg. The sand on the floor dyed crimson.

 Several times, his senses had actually flowed together and he remembered a specific man, bits of a real incident. 

 A young man crying piteously for his mother. Jack had never seen his face, because, when he’d dragged himself to the boy’s side, his sight had gone black. Incapable of anything but wrapping his arms around the lad and lying there, aching head leaned back against the bulkhead, Jack had simply held on in place of that unknown mother until the boy had grown cold in his arms. 

 Matelot, who had taken crushing shots in both legs, refusing more than the minimum of laudanum but keeping a bottle of rum close, sweat standing like raindrops on his forehead and chest, sewing ragged stitches into wool and oakum and canvas. Matelot who would never run after Jip again, nor fish him from the sea should he fall in. Who would never again break open a door instead of walking through it. “’S better to work,” he’d gasped when the harried cook-surgeon had suggested he take more of the sweet drug of oblivion.

 Diego, eviscerated from nave to chaps, but still alive, screaming his throat raw. A voice begging, “Will someone please grant that man mercy?” Crawling to the writhing ruin of a body. Fumbling clumsily, hands trembling, for his blade. Cradling the dark, damp head. Murmuring in Spanish, “Shhh. Hush. It’s all right now. You did good work, man. Brave Diego. Everything will be well. Shhh. Rest now. Go with God.” The hot gush of life against his hand, of tears on his face. Closing tormented eyes with bloodstained fingertips.

 At least the man was at peace. Jack could not, at the moment, remember peace.

 The magnificent, exploding glory of the _Dauntless_ ’s cannon fire seemed remote and distant from the lethal bursts that laid waste to the _Black Pearl_ with such savage brutality.

 The toll of her ordeal was beginning to tell on his lady.  Jack could feel her wavering and beginning to fade away from him as he paced her decks encouraging his flagging men.  More and more of the _Dauntless_ ’s shots were getting through. His ship was disintegrating around him—halyards, sheets, braces and lifts parting; blocks exploding; ratlines and footropes snapping.  Captain Sparrow felt as if each shattering blow that struck her landed on his own flesh.

 High in that cold, storm-ravaged sky above the wind-torn sea, his crew continued their fight with her sodden sails long past when the work had become only pain and purgatory. 

 When he reached the forecastle, Jack saw that the fore topgallant sail had finally been bent onto the yard. Bjorn, their one Norwegian crewman, and Requin had finished battling the clew and buntlines into submission and were descending. The two of them were an odd pair, scarcely able to communicate.  The huge blond Scandinavian had taken the small dark Frenchman under his wing when the lad had first come aboard, making sure he wasn’t imposed upon by the other rough men of the crew and trying to help him learn the ropes of being a free pirate instead of bound fo’c’sle fodder. Bjorn would jabber instructions in Norse while Requin, gesticulating wildly, would argue back in French.  Somehow the work got done.  Requin didn’t need much protecting any more, but the two of them had remained friends and often worked together.  Jack could hear parts of their odd multilingual shouting at each other as they clambered down.  As usual Requin’s responses bore no relationship to Bjorn’s exclamations.

 The men on the capstan began the painful process of heaving the yard aloft.  When it was halfway up, Jack saw that a gasket had fouled the weather clew.  He yelled to Bjorn to go out on the foretopsail yard and free it.  The man responded with alacrity, climbing back up the shrouds and scrambling onto the lurching footropes towards the perilous weather end of the yard. The sail was doing its best to smash him into the sea, straining against its bindings in self-mutilating fury. For a moment he froze, clinging to the massive spar as the ship dived a corkscrew twist into the trough of a wave.  Then carefully, enduring the battering of frantic canvas, he reached the yard end and freed the caught line. When he called down that everything was clear, his fellow crewmen began to heave and the yard began to rise slowly again. As the sail stretched taut in the wind, Bjorn inched back along the ropes.

 At that moment a stray shot carried away the fore topgallant halyards with a stinging crack.  The men at the capstan tumbled forward as the strain disappeared instantly.

 “Bjorn! Get off that yard, man!” Jack found himself shouting. “Now!” But he knew it was too late.

 With sickening speed, the huge spar dropped, pinning Bjorn in the rigging beneath it.

 Requin was the first to move, flying back towards his trapped mate.  Men rushed up the shrouds drawing fresh line with them to join him in frantically splicing the halyards to begin hauling again.  As soon as the capstan had turned enough to raise the yard slightly, they eased Bjorn from under it. At first they thought he was simply unconscious.  There was no sign of a wound, save for some blood oozing from his mouth.  Requin tried to bring him to, slapping his face and shouting his name, but to no avail.  Re-rigging a gantline, they got it under his armpits and lowered him gently to the deck. 

 Jack took one look. “He’s dead,” he said, turning away from the shaken cluster of men, heartsick. How much longer could this ordeal continue before the living began to _envy_ the dead?

 Leaving Gibbs to deal with the body, Jack headed aft. He had to get back to the helm. 

 The _Black Pearl_ was trembling under his hand when he rejoined Cotton. This was the first of her crew she had killed herself.  _It’s not your fault,_ Jack thought fiercely at her. But even if it were not, their charmed survival was drawing to a close. They were no match for that first rate ship of the line. Something definitive had to change or they were lost indeed.

 * * * * *

 Anamaria knew she would never be free of the hideous noise of shot striking hardwood. It would be the last sound she heard whether she died now or in bed of decrepit old age. Its percussion drummed through her feet as though the _Pearl_ herself were pulsing with fear.

 She moved through the horrible confusion, trying to sort out the most crucial tasks from those merely important.  Her boots were red with the torrents of blood dying the deck. As another volley of cannon fire rocked the ship, she threw herself aside, feeling her bruised knees and elbows crashing into planking again.  Two men, crouching and shielding their heads with their arms, dashed by her to the side of their mate, who huddled shaking and bloodied against the capstan where he’d been thrown.  They carried him as gently as they could across the sloping deck while Anamaria got to her feet again, trying to stop herself from shivering in shock.  When she reached the quarterdeck, a boy standing right beside her took a piece of grape shot through the ankle and collapsed into her arms, screaming. She quickly handed him off to another crewmember, and continued, iron-willed, on her mission.

 “No!”

 Anamaria heard Jack’s shout, just as she saw a section of the _Pearl_ ’s starboard rail blast in. An explosion of splinters sprayed amidst the crewmen who were hauling on the halyards in an attempt to raise the new mizzen topgallant.  The groans of the wounded rose above the thunderclaps of the now slatting sail and the roar of the _Dauntless_ ’s batteries.  But one shrill cry froze her heart. 

 For an instant, the _Pearl_ ’s smallest crewmember wavered on the edge of the ship where had once been the belaying pin from which he had been casting off a line.  But one leg had been crushed from under him by the shot, and a violent twist of the deck sent Jip spinning through that gap into the raging sea.

 “Man overboard!” someone called.

 “Cotton. Helm down! Hard!” Jack snapped. And then he was running towards that yawning opening, not even touching the stairs as he hit the quarterdeck. 

 “No! Damn you Jack Sparrow! You can’t do that! Cotton you’ll do no such thing!” Anamaria lunged and threw her arms around Jack’s chest.  She hadn’t the strength to hold him, but her dead weight on his back in combination with his broken ribs might slow him.  He scarcely seemed to notice her interference.  The tension in him was frightening.  She felt like she had grasped an armful of steel blades, as though she would surely slice herself to ribbons on the edges of his determination.

 Then Gibbs’ solid, imposing bulk loomed up between Jack and that treacherous abyss.  His large hands caught Jack’s shoulders and held him there.  Above the racket of battle and storm he shouted, “Captain, it’s too late!” His voice sank pleading. “He’s already gone.  The _Black Pearl_ needs you.”

 As Jack responded to the mention of his ship, Gibbs continued more quietly.  “The boats are gone, sir.  We can’t lose both of you.”

 Halting in the grip of his two closest friends, Jack stared past Gibbs at the glassy green walls of water swirling with foam that surrounded his ship—the empty walls of water.  Anamaria felt him gradually return to life in her arms, as though she held flesh and blood again, rather than cold steel.  She relaxed her hold, sensitive to his injuries, her arms around him in comfort this time, her cheek resting on the wet roughness of his coat.

 Jack bowed his bloodied forehead against Gibbs’ shoulder and let out a harsh breath. 

 Gibbs had been Jack’s friend longer than any of them.  That and his gray hairs gave him the prerogative to raise one rough hand and clumsily stroke the back of his captain’s head, rumbling gruffly, “I know it’s hard, lad.  I’m sorry.”

 Taking one more deep breath, Jack raised his head.  “Right.” He turned back to the ship, his face impassive. His voice revealed nothing but command.  “Gibbs, see that the wounded get hauled belowdecks. Anamaria, get me some more men on that sail. I want this ship out of here!” 

 He did not look again at the hole in that railing.

 * * * * *

As though she could sense victory, the _Dauntless_ edged closer to the _Black Pearl._  Her big guns, well served, kept up a most galling fire. Commodore Norrington noted that he could now see daylight from the pirate ship’s leeward side through her windward hull. Some of his shots were passing cleanly through her without even touching wood. Very soon the _Pearl_ would be reduced to a state where she could be easily boarded, her injured and spent crew subdued without difficulty—the culmination of more than a year of futile pursuit, difficult intelligence gathering, endless waiting, and careful planning. As the dark ship struggled gamely on, her holds filling with water, her tattered sails slipping the wind, Norrington could taste success.

 * * * * *

 The smoke of the _Dauntless_ ’s fire and the curtain of rain obscured Jack’s sight of the forecastle of his ship, but he knew when her foremast and bowsprit were struck and when her foremast stays were snapped by chainshot before he heard the cracking of wood, the twanging of taut lines whipping free, and the groaning of that now-unsupported mast. 

 He didn’t have enough strength left to curse; however, the parrot was doing enough for both of them.

 “Luff and touch her, Mr. Cotton,” Jack ordered, eyes fixed on the gray distance.  “We’ve got to deaden her way.”  The words dropped like a knell. They would be helpless until they could get her standing rigging sound again. His ship would lose valuable and hard won ground. But the alternative was even worse.

 Cotton jammed the wheel hard down and brought the ship up to the wind, moaning and shivering.

 “Easy there, love,” Jack whispered to the _Black Pearl._ “Don’t try to move too hard.”

 “Captain.” Anamaria’s voice was as tense as the _Pearl_ ’s rigging as she came to stand beside him. “If we stop now, we’re finished.”

 “We’re never finished, love,” Jack said, not taking his eyes from his threatened ship as the weight of the wind in her remaining canvas fell away. “But we will be pretty close if that mast or her bowsprit goes. Without her stays there’s nothing to hold the foremast up, especially if it’s damaged.  I’ll need you to check on her bowsprit, too, see if we have to repair it before you reeve new stays.”

 “Jack. Ain’t you forgettin’ somethin’? The _Dauntless?_ In case you hadn’t noticed, there’s a powerful lot o’ well-armed marines over there, just itchin’ to stick those shiny bayonets into our guts.” Anamaria pointed out, wondering if that knock on his head had shaken anything too important loose.  “We’ve even lost the current!”

 “Way I see it,” Jack answered quietly, as though he thought his voice would disturb some critical balance of his ship. “The _Dauntless_ will be past us before she can respond to the fact that we’re not moving. She’s a good sight heavier than the _Pearl_ , so she’ll take longer to bring up. That’ll mean she has to circle back if she doesn’t want us to slip out behind her. That’ll also buy us some time. If we can just match her for sails, we have a chance of outrunning her.”

 Eyeing him dubiously, Anamaria subsided. What the captain said was true. The _Pearl_ couldn’t escape if she lost her bowsprit or any of her masts.  And the enormous load such seas and winds would place on the foremast without those stays would wrench it from its steps, bringing it down in a spiral of ruin that could destroy the other masts and would certainly leave them helpless to escape the _Dauntless._ The only thing that remained was to carry out Daft Jack’s crackbrained orders.

 She caressed the hilt of her cutlass. At least when they were boarded, she might have a chance to shed some Navy blood before they took her down. There was some satisfaction in that thought.

 Even as she and Jack spoke, she could see the commotion on the _Dauntless_ as they realized they were committed to moving too far beyond their prey to back and fill.  A flurry of signal flags was being exchanged with the lurking brig.

 She recognized that Jack was counting on Norrington being confident enough and suspicious enough not to jeopardize his position by a mad attempt to rake the _Pearl_ ’s bow. 

 * * * * *

 “Commodore! The _Black Pearl_! She’s falling off the wind!”

 Lieutenant Gillette’s shout alerted Commodore Norrington to the need for an instantaneous decision.  Already, his more massive vessel was pulling too far ahead of the pirate ship. 

 “What is her condition, Lieutenant?” he asked sharply.

 “The enemy has suffered much in masts, rigging, and hull, above and below water, sir,” Gillette enumerated swiftly.  “Her loss in killed or wounded I am not aware of; but I judge it to be significant.”

 “Is it possible that ship is disabled?” Norrington wondered aloud.

 “Anything is possible, sir. But with Jack Sparrow, I do not know if we dare count on that.”

 “I imagine you are correct,” Norrington mused.

 “Shall I give the orders to turn and cross her line?” Gillette asked.

 “Sparrow may expect us to do just that.” The commodore grimaced. “If he is playing dead to lure us off his windward side, such a maneuver would be a mistake.”

 “We haven’t much time to decide, sir,” the lieutenant warned.

 “Indeed,” Norrington growled. “Signal the _Defender_ to draw in and engage the _Pearl_ from the lee. We’ll tack the _Dauntless_ around and come up behind the _Pearl_. Our weather advantage thus remains secure, and whether Sparrow is feigning or is truly dead in the water, we will keep him pinned right where he is.”

 “Aye, sir.” Gillette dashed off to give the orders.

 Norrington studied the _Black Pearl_ , a frown creasing his brow. Just what did that Bedlamite pirate have up his dirty sleeve now?

 * * * * *

 Sure enough, Anamaria observed, the _Dauntless_ was already swinging through the wind and reversing her heading.

 “Now that,” said Jack, nodding his head tiredly in the direction of their antagonist, “is the point of having a reputation. When your back is to the wall and you’ve got nowhere to run, they still think you have a plan.”

 The brief cessation of the bombardment was like the first breath of air in the horse latitudes—a relief that almost brought them to their knees. Around the _Pearl_ , men straightened and applied themselves with renewed vigour.

 The reprieve would be over as soon as the _Dauntless_ came about, but with that first rate ship’s wide turn radius, she’d be out of range for her sharpshooters, and her broadsides would have farther to travel.  Even though the brig was drawing closer now, and they’d surely be taking fire on both port and starboard sides, Jack’s maneuver had opened up a window of opportunity for his ship.

 Anamaria wasn’t looking forward to crawling out on that sea-swept spar, but such a task was always the mate’s job, if the mate were able-bodied, and so far she’d taken only minor injuries.  However, there was one disagreeable duty that remained.  She had to convince Jack Sparrow to let her buy the time they needed.  And the price was very steep indeed in this market.

 “Captain.”

 Jack looked inquiringly at her.

 “The minute I get the foretopmast stay reeved through the bee-blocks and the deadeye turned in to the end, you have to let her run,” Anamaria said calmly, understanding what she was asking.

 “Anamaria,” he objected softly.

 “I mean it, Jack. Don’t wait for me to rig her jib stay or her foremast stay. She’ll manage with just the one, for a short time.”

 “It gets a mite rough out there when she’s underway in seas like this,” Jack said diffidently, as though noting a trivial fact about the weather.

 “I’ll manage.” Anamaria shrugged. “The ship needs every second of time and every knot of speed she can get. We’ve got t’ give it to her.”

 Jack met her eyes silently for a moment; then he gave a short nod.

 Anamaria smiled grimly. They really had no choice.  She turned, letting the weight of responsibility wash over any nervous survival instincts that tried to jolt up and convince her that she should go curl up in her cabin. “Ladbroc, Marty, Dampier!” she called. “Get those new stays clenched to her foremasthead and her staysails on their hanks and halyards again. Crimp, Requin, Quartetto! I’ll need you to hold the line while I go for a walk up her nose.”

 “Ana.” Jack’s voice slowed her for a moment.

 “Aye, sir?” She glanced back over her shoulder.

 “Be careful out there,” he said.

 “No intentions of doin’ otherwise, Captain.” She saluted casually. Then she was off at a jog.

 * * * * *

 While Anamaria was seeing to the forward spars and rigging, Jack and Gibbs would keep up the race to get the main and mizzen sails set and repaired. With a little luck, Norrington’s shots would not hamper their efforts too badly. With a great deal more luck, Anamaria would remain safe on that bowsprit. Jack wished he had any sense that luck was with them at all this day.

 He watched Anamaria go, as fierce and strong and valiant as any man on his ship—aye, and as fragile and mortal, too.  He laid his hand again on the scarred wood of the _Black Pearl_ ’s helm, brushing restlessly along the familiar curve. _Take care of her, love. Take care of them all._

 * * * * *

TBC


	11. To Beat the Surges Under and Ride Upon Their Backs

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Anamaria does something stupid and Commodore Norrington gets a surprise. This chapter should be a relief after the last one.

Anamaria decided she really should have known better than to sail as first mate on the ship belonging to the most wanted man in the Caribbean. What could she possibly have been thinking? So he was also the prettiest man in the Caribbean, with the silverest, most forked tongue and an off-center tendency to be a good man when it was least convenient and a scoundrel when it was even more inconvenient. So he had eyes like a cobra’s that made you stand like a frozen rodent and hold when all sense, common and uncommon, said to run like hell. She still should have known better. People with battleships and big guns and empires behind them liked to shoot at him. And their aim wasn’t any too good. 

And then he didn’t even have to ask her to do this stunt. She’d volunteered. Because it was the mate’s job, of course. But what a nodcock thing to have done, anyway! Volunteered to crawl out on that sapling waving about at the stem of this temperamental ship in the midst of a gale with Jack’s enemies hotfooting it back to blow some more cannonballs his way. And to top off the evidence that she’d left her mind along with her life in Tortuga the day she’d signed on to Jack Sparrow’s stolen ship, she’d practically forced Jack to agree to put this ship to the wind while she still had two more stays to set. Surely she must have some sort of death wish. She really should see someone about that. Perhaps she could get a charm made against it. If she lived. 

Or he’d already bewitched her. That made more sense. If there ever were a man who had witchery in his hands, it was Jack Sparrow. She was bespelled, and it made her stupid.

In the privacy of her head, Anamaria acknowledged to herself that her frantic thoughts were a whirling vortex around a pit of fear that had her hands sweating, in spite of the chill of the rain, and her heart beating as though it knew it had too little time left and was trying to get it all in before she set foot on that bowsprit. 

She had as much courage as anyone could reasonably expect, but there was nothing about that task that gave her any hope of surviving it. On the other hand, the way things were going, if someone didn’t do this job, they wouldn’t be surviving anyway, so she just had to convince her stomach that it was more dangerous to remain on deck than to venture out on that spar.

The three men she’d selected to assist her stood solemnly around her as she carefully knotted the line around her body. Then they helped her attach the lighter lines that she would use to haul the stays out to her when she was ready for them. Finally Requin handed her a heavy, clanking sack that contained every thing from spare blocks, to extra rope, to needles and cord, to bolts, to marlinspikes—anything they could imagine she might need out there to make repairs. She secured that to her belt, heaved a deep breath, mentally smacked her brain upside the head and told it to shut the hell up, and stepped up between the knightheads.

Turning, she pointed to the lifeline. “Y’ might want t’ take a wrap of that around one of these,” she gestured to the knighthead. “Give you some leverage if I fall.” If? her frantic mind gibbered. Don’t you mean when? Anamaria ignored it. 

Once she was out on the tossing bowsprit of the Black Pearl, Anamaria was grateful that most of the ship’s forward momentum had ceased. Even so she had to cling to the slippery spar with arms and legs wrapped around it as the high seas continued to drive against the bow. She didn’t want to know what condition she’d be in if she lost her grip and had to be hauled back by the rope around her waist. 

In between being battered by treacherous seas, she continued to move forward. As she crept by above the Black Pearl’s figurehead, Anamaria saluted, a courtesy. From what she could glimpse, the carved figure didn’t seem too badly harmed, a fact that illogically cheered her.

Inching out over open space, she could scarcely see for the wind-whipped salt spray and the rain, so she used her hands to feel for any damage to the wood. It seemed as though that spar was growing longer as she moved, that she’d be crawling forever and never reach the cap. At any moment, she expected the return of the Dauntless and the resumption of close quarters cannon fire. And she’d really rather not end her days being shot off a bowsprit into the sea.

Finally her hands found the dip in the smooth surface of the spar where the shot had winged her. Anamaria let out a sigh of relief. It hadn’t sprung. No cracks or splits radiated from that indentation. While the bowsprit would be a little weaker, she’d hold a bit longer. That’s a brave lass! she praised the Pearl. You’ll be able to handle that little nick, won’t you, love?

At that moment the first concussion of the Dauntless’s returning fire rocked the ship. Anamaria swore and grabbed hard for the jib guy as she was nearly thrown off the spar. Her heart hammering an echo of the blast, she found herself with her legs clamped around the bowsprit and her body arched out over the water while her hands, supporting her weight on the rough line, acquired blisters where she hadn’t known she still could get blisters. She could hear her watchdogs yelling something, but she couldn’t tell what it was. 

Painfully, slowly, feeling every muscle in her back and abdomen making dire threats of retribution, Anamaria dragged herself upright onto the bowsprit again. The shouting did not diminish, so she risked squinting back over her shoulder. Only two of her men were standing, and the knighthead to which her lifeline had been wrapped was a splintered ruin. Oh. She realized the rope around her waist was now trailing down into the sea, of no use whatsoever. 

Requin and Quartetto were gesturing wildly for her to return, but she shook her head. No. They didn’t have the time. She had to get that stay rigged as fast a possible. The thought that she might lash herself to the bowsprit crossed her mind, but she would need too much slack in order to work. Her imagination supplied her with a picture of her hanging from the bowsprit being gradually sawn in half by the rope. She’d rather drown, thank you very much.

The two anxious men looked ready to come out on the bowsprit after her, but she signaled for them to remain where they were. No sense in them risking their lives, too. The habit of obeying Anamaria was ingrained enough that they did not persist. She imagined Jack would have trampled right over her orders, but he was too far away to see what she was up to. 

Continuing to work her way towards the bowsprit cap, Anamaria noted that the tackle attaching the stays to the ship’s hull seemed to be intact. Good. That would mean she could reuse it, which would save an enormous amount of time and hard work. 

Normally, a sailor was allowed one hand for the ship and one for himself, but she was going to need both her hands to manipulate the rigging. Praying that another shot would not dislodge her, Anamaria wrapped her legs hard around the spar and the end of the jib boom and wedged her feet around the dolphin striker. Carefully she un-reeved the snapped stay from the bee-blocks and tied it onto her belt. Then she worked the new foretopmast stay up to her by its line, looked up to see that it wasn’t fouled with any other lines, and with hands that were beginning to shake with cold began to reeve the end through the block. 

An oncoming sea nearly took her by surprise before she could secure the line. As the weight of cold dark water smashed over her, Anamaria had only one thought. She must not let go of that stay. With her other hand she clung to the bowsprit cap until her fingers were crying for relief. The crush of water seemed to go on forever, until Anamaria was convinced she was going to drown, but finally the ship emerged, and she found herself gasping for air, with bloodied fingers, but still on board and still grasping the precious stay. 

Swiftly she finished the process of reeving it, then uncramped her legs, and amidst their protest, began shinnying back down the bowsprit to where the blocks and tackle were hanging, still attached to the snapped piece of rigging she’d removed. She froze, pressed to the wood, as she heard the ripping silk sound of shot sing by her head. That was too bloody close! Damn it! Rigging should be done in harbour, with sunny skies and lazy seas, not in the middle of a storm while some sonofabitch Navy gun crew tried to take potshots at her.

Removing her heart firmly from her throat and swallowing it back down into her stomach, where it insisted on flopping about wildly, she pulled in the foretopmast stay tackle and began trying to work loose the knot attaching the old stay to the deadeye. It was immediately obvious that that was not working, so she maneuvered her knife free and cut the knot off. Her fingers tried to object, but she ignored them, and with the speed of much practice, tied on the new stay. 

It was done. The stay was bent on. The foremast was out of immediate danger. Anamaria signaled her foremast crew to haul the stay in hard and let the staysail run down its hanks. She’d have to get it set, but the Black Pearl was now able to get underway. Already the fire of the Dauntless was decreasing as the Navy ship began its tack around to come up on them again. She was running out of time. Anamaria began her painstaking return to the bowsprit cap to splice the fore staysail tack to the lanyard and pass it through the heart. Then all that would remain would be to put the bight of the pendent through the clew at the other end of the sail and seize the two parts and the sail would be good to go. It would be a relief to shed some of this tackle she was hauling around.

When she had that little task complete, assuming she stayed on the bowsprit long enough to do it, she would see whether Jack Sparrow would keep his word to her and let the Pearl run free. 

If he didn’t, she wouldn’t have to kill him. The Navy would oblige.

* * * * *

The Dauntless had finished her run down alongside the Pearl and Commodore Norrington was giving the orders to bring his ship about in preparation for coming up on the pirate ship again when a shout rang out above the roar of the storm. “There’s a live one in the water!”

A moment later, the startling and most inconvenient information, “’E’s naught but a bit of a lad!” was added. 

Cursing the delay, Norrington ordered his ship hove to and joined his men by the Dauntless’s rail. There was indeed a small boy, clinging to a piece of the Black Pearl’s hull, being drawn out to sea by the tidal current, and likely to wash right up beside them as they came about in preparation for drawing abreast of the Black Pearl again. 

While he might wish no one had noticed the boy, Norrington was not the kind of man who could live with himself if he made no attempt at a rescue. 

“Lower the boat,” he instructed Lieutenant Gillette. 

The lieutenant, knowing his commander well, did not bother to object that the seas were far too heavy to risk such an endeavor. He relayed the orders, cutting short the complaints with a crisp, “That is a child out there, men. You have your duty.” 

In fact, the entire rescue operation went without a hitch, in spite of what appeared to be their rescuee’s attempt to avoid being saved, and soon their only actual captured pirate lay gasping and, Norrington noted, bleeding on the deck. Something had mangled one of his legs. One of their shots, perhaps, or a shard of blasted wood. It was a nasty break through which bone protruded. Nevertheless, the boy utilized the ship’s rail to drag himself nearly to his feet where he stood on one leg, shaking and pale and glaring defiance at them. 

“You!” he hissed vehemently, eyes blazing with brilliant blue fire, “You bloody whoreson Navy bastards!” 

Norrington supposed the sentiment was understandable under the circumstances, but it became rapidly apparent that the boy’s own injuries were not what had their captive so incensed. 

“You hurt my captain!” His young voice blistered with an inferno of hatred. “You are shooting at my ship!” 

So Sparrow was wounded. That was an important piece of intelligence. The commodore wondered how severe the injury had been and how that would be affecting the tactical situation. For instance, would that put Sparrow’s second in command in charge? And just what manner of man was he? Perhaps they could get more information out of this child. In fact, they might acquire a great deal of hitherto unknown data concerning the operations of the Black Pearl. Norrington was rapidly becoming reconciled to the small delay the capture had necessitated.

Then the tactical situation on board the Dauntless took a turn for the worse. The little firebrand they’d fished from the ocean pulled a knife. The child’s face was bone-white with suffering. He looked nearly ready to drop with exhaustion from loss of blood and the fight with those massive waves. He was shivering with exposure and shock, clinging with one white-knuckled hand to the pitching rail. But no one had any doubt that at least one or more of the men who took that knife from him would be adding his blood to that deck.

Norrington really would have to speak to his men. Pirates grew their teeth young. In the future, he didn’t want them picking up so much as a suckling infant pirate without searching it for weapons. 

Things went rapidly to the devil from there. Norrington found himself and his men being informed specifically, crudely, and in great detail, just exactly which body parts the boy proposed to remove with his knife and what creative uses he planned to find for them once they were removed. 

Navy tars were not known for the sweetness and light of their speech, but Norrington could not recall quite this level of foul language. If ever the cliché about making a sailor blush could come true, he did not doubt this was the boy who could do it. He was as eloquent as he was ingenious, and the commodore noted more than one man was looking queasily protective about the aforesaid parts. He did not like to imagine the kind of life such a child must have led. 

Lieutenant Groves, the commodore noted with exasperated resignation, was looking amused and appreciative.

Some of his young crew, the cabin boys and a few of the midshipmen, had never actually seen a pirate in person. Even though this was a pint-sized specimen, apparently younger than any of them, it was living up to its reputation for depravity in fine style. They stared with wide eyes—the commodore could practically see their ears extend and pivot. He imagined the vocabulary amongst the middies was going to take a dramatic plummet for the worse with all due speed. 

Enough was certainly enough. “Put the knife down, son,” he suggested gently. “That way no one will get hurt.” Or at least hurt any worse. Norrington was aware that he did not have the moral high ground in this argument. He and his ship were certainly responsible for the fact that this boy was going to bleed to death on the decks of the Dauntless, unless he received help soon.

“I will not!” the child refused adamantly. “You shall not take me prisoner, nor will I die like a dog on your wretched gallows.”

The commodore’s own temper flared at this. “Did Sparrow actually tell you we would hang a boy like you?” Of all the unprincipled lies . . .

“Captain. It’s Captain Sparrow,” the boy insisted. 

Oh God. Not another one of them. Norrington resisted the urge to roll his eyes.

Then, surprisingly, the child lowered his head. “No, he didn’t. He said that some of us, the ones that didn’t have a record, would likely go free, if we surrendered. That you’d be looking for crew on your ships.” He bit his lip, and when he raised his head there were tears in his eyes. “But we wouldn’t surrender. We voted. All of us voted. We would die before we’d surrender. And I was going to, before you made me come here. I just . . . I just hadn’t been able to make myself let go yet.”

And the pirate child reversed the knife.

“Belay that, Mister!” Norrington snapped in the voice that brooked no disobedience, that moved the 600 souls aboard the Dauntless as though they were merely his extended limbs. 

Instinctively, the boy froze.

A swift-thinking and even swifter-moving marine took the opportunity to disarm the bloodthirsty pirate. The boy made a small cry of betrayal and despair.

“Listen to me.” Norrington spoke sharply, regaining the boy’s attention. “You have not surrendered. You have been captured in honourable combat and are now my prisoner. Now, we will discuss the terms of your parole. What is your name, boy?”

The narrow chin jutted up spiritedly. “What’s yours?”

Norrington’s own men winced. Nobody spoke to the commodore like that.

Norrington reminded himself that small as it was, this was a pirate. One who had certainly never been brought up to practice any form of courtesy. What’s more, one who had been under the tutelage of that master of annoyance, Jack Sparrow. It wasn’t the child’s fault.

“My name,” he responded gravely, “is Commodore Norrington.”

“Oh.” The boy seemed to deflate. “Then this is the Dauntless.”

“It is.”

“All right then.” The child heaved a sigh. “I’ll give you my parole.”

Norrington raised an eyebrow. That had gone better than he had expected. “You’ve heard of me before, I take it.”

“Yes. Captain Sparrow says you are a good man. So that’s all right then.” The boy seemed resigned.

“A good man?” Norrington could not have been more astonished if he’d learnt that Sparrow thought he was the archangel Gabriel. 

The miniature pirate placed one finger on his chin and glanced introspectively skyward in a perfect imitation of Sparrow himself and quoted, “No sense of humour, but a good man.” 

“Very well.” Norrington ignored the backhanded compliment. He did too have a sense of humour. How like Sparrow to manage to get on his nerves without even being present. But the reply settled that this interrogation would be his task. He indicated to Gillette that everyone should return to his duties. They were almost upon the Black Pearl again, and the gun crews needed to be ready to resume their work. The lieutenant took over smoothly and the decks around the commodore and his captive cleared.

* * * * *

Anamaria did not hear the jangle of hanks as the fore top staysail ran up its lines, but she felt the stay sing taut as the wind caught canvas. She breathed a sigh of relief. The captain was doing as they had agreed. The sails were being trimmed and she could feel the surge of the Pearl underneath her. You could never tell about Jack Sparrow. He had an incongruous heroic streak in him that led him into the most impossible situations at times. She hadn’t been sure until this moment that he wouldn’t risk himself and the ship to save her. But even Jack must know that more lives than hers were at stake, and that if he did not rip the Black Pearl from the Navy grasp soon, all their lives were forfeit. 

The ship, on the other hand, seemed reluctant. Anamaria frowned, concentrating on the feeling of wrongness in the Black Pearl’s motion, a hanging back and quarrelling with the wind that was not usual with this ship who had always seemed condensed from the wind itself. Although Anamaria often talked to the Pearl she almost never received the impression that the ship was listening, but this time the sense that the Pearl surrounded her, even out on that tenuous slender spar, was overwhelming. Anamaria wrapped her arms and legs around the bowsprit and laid her cheek against the cold wet wood, ignoring the stinging dash of spray against her body, holding her breath as the ship, now underway, ploughed her bow into the face of an oncoming wave. 

“You have to do it, lady,” she whispered against that black timber, when the darkness cleared and she could breathe again. “Don’t mind me. Just save him and save yourself. You have to fly as fast as you can. Let the sea do its worst. Just get him away from here alive.” 

Those were the right words. Like an arrow shot from a bow, the Black Pearl unleashed herself. As she leapt ahead into the storm-torn seas, the sheer power of her caught at Anamaria’s throat. That’s my beauty, she thought wistfully. Nothing can catch you when you put your heart into it.

But Jack’s dark lady would need the remainder of her headsails to win this race with death. Cautiously, Anamaria crept over the bowsprit cap and began to worm her way out onto the sea-wracked jib boom.

* * * * *

As the Dauntless drew up alongside the Black Pearl, the commodore resumed questioning his captive. “Since you have your captain’s approval of myself, will you tell me your name?”

“It’s Jip,” the little pirate said sullenly. The ship rocked with the concussion of her cannon and the boy jerked and winced in startlement. His face twisted minutely and his eyes flew away from the commodore, across the ship, and out to where the Black Pearl was once more under Navy guns.

“Is that all? Do you have a surname?” Norrington persisted.

The boy wrenched his eyes back to his inquisitor. “Just Jip.” He raised his head higher, scowling.

“Who is your family?” Norrington prodded. He needed to get a pattern of question and answer going, before he got to the questions to which he really needed answers. His prisoner still gripped the railing with both hands, growing fainter by the minute. The commodore resisted the sensation that he was interrogating the boy by torture, but his conscience was uneasy. Were these the actions of the “good man” in whom the boy seemed to put such faith?

“Don’t have one, ’cept for Captain Sparrow and the Black Pearl.” The boy gulped back what might have been a sob.

“Is he related to you?” That seemed impossible. Certainly a man of Sparrow’s complexion could never have a blue-eyed by-blow such as this boy.

“Course not! I don’t have any relations,” Jip scoffed. 

From what kind of a past had this child come? How could he have no memory of a family? He certainly wasn’t the typical pirate whelp. Remarkably well-spoken in fact, in spite of a talent for the worst sort of gutter language. There was some mystery here. 

“Where are you from?” Norrington asked, keeping his voice as gentle as possible.

“Brazil.”

That this fair child hailed from Portuguese-held Brazil seemed unlikely in the extreme. “Where in Brazil?”

“Paraiba.”

The name did not convey anything to the commodore. “Port town?” he asked.

“No.”

That was odd. What had Sparrow been doing inland in Brazil? “How did you come to be on the Black Pearl?”

“Captain Sparrow rescued me and let me stay.”

“Rescued you from what?”

The boy remained silent. He bit his lip as the guns gave voice again. Apparently the commodore wasn’t going to get that story.

Norrington waited a minute longer, but no answers were forthcoming. “How long have you been with the Black Pearl?” he asked finally.

“Don’t know. Not quite a year.” The boy wiped his nose with the back of his hand. His voice trembled a little.

“Who is first mate on your ship?”

Jip opened his mouth and then shut it again, his eyes going crafty behind the fog of pain. “That answer doesn’t belong to me,” he said stubbornly.

“How badly was your captain injured?”

Accusing silence met that question.

Damnation! This child was too bright by half. Norrington’s hopes of finding a fountain of information began to dry up. Besides, the boy looked about to collapse. His arms, holding him up, were trembling. The commodore could not in good conscience drive him any further. Why couldn’t he have captured some hard-bitten old buccaneer with a string of human teeth around his neck? Someone to whom he wouldn’t mind applying thumbscrews? 

He hailed a passing sailor.

“Mr. Maddocks!

“Aye, sir?”

“Take our guest to the surgeon, Mr. Maddocks. That leg needs some attention.” 

“Aye, sir.” The burly Welshman bent over and unceremoniously scooped up the boy.

Jip’s sudden, harsh intake of breath was the only sign he gave that the move was agonizing.

“And I’ll tell him he’s gettin’ too lazy this time out, so we’re bringin’ him some work from the enemy side,” the sailor chuckled.

“I’m sure we are all grateful this is a slow day for the good doctor,” Norrington said repressively. 

“Aye, sir,” the man muttered.

Then Norrington caught sight of Jip’s pinched, miserable little face. Damn. He had to warn his men not to be so callous around that child. Pirate ships did not usually have surgeons, and the Black Pearl would be in desperate need of one at present.

As the boy hung limply in the arms of the sailor, his small voice tugged at the commodore.

“Please, sir? Could you stop shooting at my ship?”

Norrington had a vision of the storm waters running red from the Pearl’s washports. The Dauntless shook again as her battery of guns barked their destruction at the pirate vessel. Jip flinched as he had each time they had gone off. A knot twisted the commodore’s stomach as he imagined what that child had seen on those decks before he’d been shot off them. He wished he could pretend he hadn’t heard that request—the first polite thing the boy had said. He wished he could give a different answer.

Sadly he gazed at the pirate child whose only family he was doing his best to annihilate. “I’m sorry, Jip.” He shook his head fractionally. “I cannot.”

“Oh,” the small voice got even smaller, wobbling slightly.

The commodore’s nod indicated that the sailor should continue transporting his burden to the surgeon. The last thing Norrington saw of Jip was a pair of fear-blackened, wide eyes disappearing into the wardroom door. The commodore had never felt more like a murderer.

On his way aft, he paused by the marine whose quick thinking in disarming their captive had prevented a very ugly situation. The commodore owed this man.

“Good work,” he commended, nodding.

“Thankee, sir.” The marine touched his hat brim. “I got young uns of m’own, sir.”

Norrington smiled his gratitude and continued back to the quarterdeck. He still had a battle to direct. And one new piece of intelligence he’d gained had changed everything. Death before surrender. Dear God. Sparrow had finally gone completely mad. And it appeared to be contagious.

* * * * *  
TBC


	12. One Equal Temper of Heroic Hearts

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The battle continues. Jack’s patience finally runs out. On the rollercoaster of this story, this one has a major dip. The sense of humour is in abeyance again.

The trap was closing.  Jack could feel its teeth sinking deep into his soul.  Already the _Dauntless_ was nearly upon them, driving hard, masts rolling beneath the leaden sky, seas boiling past her bow, inexorably stalking his tortured _Black Pearl._ The _Defender_ continued to nip at her flanks, snarling shots from the lee.  If his ship did not move soon, the fight would be over.  Norrington’s men would board her, and his drained and shattered crew would be fighting steel and pistol shot for their lives.

Out on the bowsprit, he knew Anamaria was contending with the sea and the storm to steal time from the jaws of death.  She had asked him to make that sacrifice mean something, to let the ship run free the minute running was possible, and he knew he would give that order. He had no other choice. One good death. That was all he had been able to promise any of them. He hoped, if it came to that, it would be good enough.

The shout drifted aft. The foretopsail stay was in place. She had done it.

Cotton stood beside him at the _Pearl_ ’s helm. Gibbs was a stout-hearted presence to his right. Captain Sparrow kept his eyes on the rain-smudged silhouette of his ship’s bow and gave the word.

“Let her loose, gentlemen.”

As Gibbs set in motion the trimming of her sails and Cotton brought her helm up, the _Black Pearl_ began to pay off, her head falling off from the wind and dropping to leeward. Gradually, the great black ship began to make way again, and only just in time. The first of the returning _Dauntless_ ’s broadsides was already chewing into her hull.

Each time his ship buried her bowsprit in gray-green water, Jack held his breath. When the shout went up to raise the jib and the dark, triangular sail billowed and caught the wind, he knew Anamaria had managed to hang on at least that long. One more stay and she could return to the ship. His other crewmen faced their own battles with wind that sought to pluck them from the yards, with splitting canvas that nearly whipped them off into the sea, and with deadly hissing shots that hungered for their blood. Even as he waited, his men on the mizzen topgallant succeeded in sheeting it home. He could not have asked for a more magnificent group of souls with whom and for whom to make this last stand

His ship, drawing strength from the greater press of canvas, heeled over further, lee rail all but buried in frothing water. Neck and neck the _Dauntless_ and the _Black Pearl_ ran, like the thoroughbreds they were, knifelike cutwaters slicing through the sea, sails straining aloft, graceful hulls now leaping high from crest to crest, now smothered in foam.

Watching the _Dauntless_ , Jack was struck anew by the terrible beauty of a warship, her sides spangled with fire, the deadly pulse of her guns shivering the air. His broken and bleeding _Black Pearl_ strained to flee her splendid nemesis, bitterly flogging nearly to windward, clawing her way towards the open sea. The wind screamed around her. Her plates ground and groaned with her effort.  However, she could not shake the tall ship that paced serenely beside her.  Even with the return of her headsails and the new topgallant, they had not been able to keep enough whole canvas on the _Pearl_ to make the difference. They were caught, like insects in amber, in that ship-straining, man-killing, sea-swept battle.

* * * * *

Anamaria was slithering her way back past the bowsprit cap down towards the fore stay collar when the shot struck. White heat coursed up her right leg as she was nearly thrown off the spar.  Only the fact that the impact drove her against the fore top staysail clew lines kept her from plunging into the sea churning far below.

Her first wild thought, when she could think again, was that the dolphin striker was gone and the martingales that guyed the jib boom were lost.

_Oh shitshitshitshit!_ her mind chanted in hysterical panic. But a swift inspection revealed that it was not so bad as that. The spritsail yard had been blown away. _Easy love,_ she soothed the ship with one shaking hand, _You’ll be able to live with that._

On the other hand, Anamaria herself was not in such good shape. The heat in her leg had gone cold as ice, radiating up past her knee into her thigh.  She knew how cold ice was. One of the bats that inhabited Jack’s head had stuck firmly under that red scarf of his and had flapped its wings until they’d been off to sail around Cape Horn.  She’d climbed rigging three-inches-thick with ice, felt ice crackle in her clothing on deck as the salt-wash from those southern graybeards had frozen it stiff, strained her eyes through thick white fog for great ice islands that could loom silently out of the cold seas and swallow a ship alive.

Ice numbed your hands until you had to watch your fingers to know what they were doing, just as she was having to do now. Ice hurt—and sure enough, pain followed. Knifing pain. Pain that burned like fire and bitter cold until she could scarcely see, until flames licked at her vision and ice ran in her veins instead of blood.

She didn’t look at her leg, didn’t want to know what had happened. Bad enough anyway.  She couldn’t use it.  The next comber that swept the _Pearl_ ’s bow would take her with it.  Except it didn’t.  Somehow she was still on that dark wooden strip of life in the midst of the heaving chaos when the water drained away with a roar.  She choked down a scream that nearly made her stomach writhe in revolt.  Then Anamaria did the only thing she could do. She resumed her slow, inexorable creep towards that final stay.

Her world narrowed to her clumsy, uncooperative hands and the span of black timber between them.

Her arrival at the forestay collar was a surprise to her. It had seemed like her life would go on unchanging, forever. Bloodied fingers, rough scarred wood, crushing water, bright fierce pain, endless toil, over and over again.  But here was her destination. She stared dumbly at the horseshoe-shaped wooden heart through which the collar ran, trying to remember why it had seemed so important to find it.

Somehow she did it. Somehow she got the final stay set and the fore staysail rigged. She had no memory of doing it. Her muscles were quivering from the exertion of holding her on the bowsprit against the fury of the seas that battered her. Her fingers could scarcely obey a single command. But somehow the job was done.

Anamaria felt the last knot tug home. From a great distance she saw herself raise one hand in faint signal. _All clear, Jack. Give this lady her head._ As she began her final passage back to the ship, she heard the staysail crack and hold as the wind hit it, but the feel and the sound of the ship was receding until all Anamaria could hear was the rumbling, rushing voice of the sea, and all she could feel was its violent hand plucking her, unresisting, from the spar.

In the end, all she could see was shadow.

To stop struggling, to give in and fall, was such a blessed relief.

Peaceful.

Anamaria waited calmly for the sudden shock of water, waited to be sucked under by the seas rushing past the _Pearl_ ’s bow, waited to feel the blades of barnacled timbers score her flesh.  She was numb now. Frozen as ice. She would not feel much, not for long.

But it never came. Instead the darkness into which she fell enfolded her like great black wings, and the last thing she felt before her mind went numb      too, was the comforting brush of feathers.

* * * * *

When Requin came running along the decks, ignoring the barrage of cannon fire, leaping up the stairways, his eyes wild, his mouth twisted into wrenching sobs, Gibbs felt an unexpected sick sensation slide down a comber into his gut.  Jack leapt down the companionway to meet him on the quarterdeck, eyes full of questions and dread at what the answers might be.

The boy was babbling frantically to the captain in that heathen language of his, and the captain was trying to calm him even as Jack’s face was turning to cold, grey marble, the little expression left in him bleeding away, leaving only stone behind. The questions he fired at Requin, also in French, were terse and brittle.

When the report had reached its conclusion, Jack cursed long and fluently. Gibbs didn’t know what he was saying, but Requin’s eyes opened wide and his mouth dropped in awe. 

“What is it, Cap’n?” Gibbs asked when the captain fell silent and simply stood, rooted to the deck.

“It’s Anamaria.” Jack’s voice was numb and toneless, his eyes full of starless night. “She’s been washed off the bowsprit.”

Gibbs stared at the captain, trying to drive such an impossible sentence into his head. Anamaria overboard. And they were unable to stop.

Jack continued translating. “He tried . . . they tried to get her to come back in when they lost the lifeline, but she wouldn’t take the time. Then when she caught a piece of shrapnel, she still wouldn’t strike her colours. Just kept on tryin’ to get those headsails on. One minute she was there, then the bowsprit was swallowed by a sea, and then she was gone.”

The captain gazed out towards the bow of the _Black Pearl._  “Bloody stupid woman, tryin’ t’ play the bloody hero,” he said. And Gibbs could hear some throttled emotion trying to get past the tightness of that statement.

“Did she get them on?” Gibbs asked.

“What?”

“The stays. Did she get them set before . . .” he trailed off.

“Oh, aye,” Jack spoke angrily. “She got them on. All of ‘em. Even after she’d been hit.”

“Then at least,” Gibbs said, trying to make sense of it for himself, “at least it weren’t for nothin’. Her goin’ out there, I mean.”

The look Jack turned on him shut him up like a door slammed in his face.

“Of course it was for nothing,” the captain snapped, cold fury stirring. “This is all for nothing. I do not know what we have done that merits this hell, but it ends here and it ends now. No more of mine will be cut down on these decks like cattle.”

His left hand closed around the hilt of his cutlass. 

Gibbs shivered as the ship rocked under the fusillade of Navy guns. He reflected that Norrington had the right idea—to blast them to pieces from a distance.  The commodore would not want to be facing the pirate captain over cold steel at this moment. He had a feeling he’d just seen Jack Sparrow’s patience run out.

Pivoting violently, Jack stalked back towards the helm of his ship, clawing his right arm out of the sling.

“Jack!” Gibbs was alarmed. “Jack Sparrow, what’s in your head, ye daft bugger?” He limped worriedly along behind the captain. What were they going to do if the captain really had slipped a cog? 

Jack didn’t answer him.  He took the poop deck steps two at a time, leaving Gibbs far in his wake.

“Mr. Cotton,” Captain Sparrow ordered, striding up to the _Black Pearl_ ’s great wheel.  “I’ve got her helm.”

“Three sheets to the wind,” the parrot squawked, startled.

“Aye, ye’ve never said a truer word, Cotton,” Gibbs growled, coming up panting as Cotton stepped away from the helm and Jack closed his hands over it. “Jack Sparrow, ye can’t be doin’ that! Ye’ve broke your ribs!”

“Can.” Jack gasped as the weight of sea and ship crashed against his abused body. “Did.”

“Jack.” Gibbs tried to reason with him. “Captain, ye can’t make her go any faster just by torturin’ yourself!” But he could tell he was whistling psalms to the taffrail.

“Mr. Gibbs,” Jack said through clenched teeth, the words fractured by pain,  “the _Black Pearl—_ is not just any—ship.  She has something—that is not bound by any law. It’s not something in her keel—or her hull or her decks—or her sails. It’s not something they can—blast away—with their little cannon. It’s something—in her heart.”

And then for all the attention the captain paid his quartermaster and his hovering helmsman, he might have been alone on her decks. His face contorted with effort, he held the wheel steady in the turmoil of the seas. With one hand, he caressed the _Pearl’_ s helm like a man does a racehorse being asked for the final effort in the home stretch. Although Gibbs had to strain to catch his words, the captain’s anguished call to his ship, coming through shallow gasps for air, sent a chill down his quartermaster’s spine.

“Fly, my lady! Fly!—Take the wind—in your teeth and rip it—out of the heavens!—Do it!—Before we are all dead men!”

The wind did not change. The sea did not grow calmer. None of her sails were altered. There was no letup in the punishment she was taking from her opponent _._ However, as if in answer to her captain’s voice and to his touch alone, the great black ship surged forward, her masts raking, her shattered hull crying out, her shot-torn sails gathering in the thunder of the wind.

Slowly, impossibly, miraculously, she began to pull ahead of the _Dauntless._

Gibbs felt his eyes sting with something that was not the spray of the sea or the wind in his face. Aye, Jack was right about this wild, free ship of his. And there was something more, too. Gibbs turned to consider Captain Jack Sparrow, gripping the helm of the _Black Pearl_ until surely his knuckles must bruise his skin, eyes striking sparks into the storm, teeth bared in feral defiance, deliberately oblivious to his own agony. There was something in her captain that was not bound by any law either. It was not some strength in that slender, muscle-corded body, neither could they break it with his bones nor bleed it from his flesh. There was something about the heart of this man, like the heart of his ship, that in the end, refused to lose.

* * * * *

On the quarterdeck of the _Dauntless_ , Commodore Norrington watched in disbelief as the distance between his sleek-hulled, perfectly-trimmed battleship and the splintered, crippled, sail-torn _Black Pearl_ widened.  The _Dauntless_ was carrying as much canvas as she could in such weather, but she was being out-raced by the nearly-destroyed pirate vessel. The fastest ship in the Caribbean? Perhaps she had been. But now? He’d nearly stripped her planking down to her ribs with his long guns. Half her sails were shredded or flailing uselessly. Just how did that ship even continue to sail?

“Signal the _Defender_!” he snapped. “Now is the time to cross her T.  I want that damned ship cut off!”

The flags rattled fiercely up their line, calling forth an answering signal from the smaller, swifter brig. As though unleashed, the _Defender_ sprang to match the _Black Pearl_ ’s speed, then exceeded it.  Norrington smiled grimly. He had at least done that much damage to Sparrow’s ship. Gracefully, the fiery little pirate-hunter curved her course in order to block the _Pearl_ ’s escape, her broadsides already lashing down the enemy’s decks.

The _Dauntless_ stayed hard on the pirate ship’s starboard quarter, pinning her.

This is it Jack Sparrow. Norrington thought. We have had our words. You have fought well, but it is finished now. There was never any doubt about this outcome. It is time to stand down.

* * * * *

From the distance that separated him from pain and grief and the sounds of his dying ship and his dying men, Jack Sparrow could hear a voice crying.

“Curse you for breathin’, Jack Sparrow! You’re bloody mad!”

Whoever it was did not know the half of it.

Jack’s hands were welded to the handles of his _Pearl_ ’s wheel. Sweat joined the rain in bathing his entire body. He could feel his muscles shaking, threatening mutiny, but still he held.  The _Black Pearl_ did not deviate one mark from her course.

Inside his head, a litany of curses and oaths ebbed and flowed through the sharp slices of pain he was ignoring. _Damn you, Commodore Norrington! Damn you and your beautiful ships to every hell of every god and devil on Earth.  No man of mine will stand alone on your scaffold to be jeered by your mobs. Not one of these brave men will rot in chains in that stone arch.  Your hands, stained with their blood, will never touch the helm of this ship, nor will she ever sail in your shackles. You shall not take this prize. I swear it._

The _Defender_ ’s captain was obviously a man of iron nerve.  He held his ground as the _Black Pearl_ charged towards the smaller ship and the limitless, open sea just beyond her.  To avoid a collision Jack would have to wheel his ship into the wind.  With the _Dauntless_ immediately on her flank and high-sided head seas halting her bow, the _Pearl_ would find herself stuck in the eye of the wind, dead in the water, her sails luffing. Clearly the man expected that the pirates would prefer this to certain death. Admirable tactics except for one slight miscalculation.

Jack gritted his teeth and held the helm steady amidships. _C’mon_ , he thought with ferocious concentration at the other captain. _Move your bloody ship! Move her before we make you our escort to hell.  For we have not yet tasted the hope that we might survive this battle and dead men have nothing to lose.  You cannot turn us aside with misguided heroics. I will drive the_ Pearl _’s bowsprit through the heart of your bonny brig before I let you edge us into the wind._  

* * * * *

As the _Black Pearl_ moved beyond range of all but the _Dauntless’_ s bow chasers and swivel guns, Commodore Norrington called the orders that would send his ship in pursuit.  He had to leave Sparrow no option but to engage the _Defender._

Captain Walton had his ship perfectly positioned. But as Norrington kept watch through his glass, he felt like the pit of his stomach had sunk into the trough of a high wave. The _Defender_ was blocking Sparrow’s path to the sea, leaving the pirate with no viable alternative. To veer to port would pin him too close to the rocks of the coast to make the necessary tack. To veer to starboard would effectively put his ship in irons.  Under ordinary circumstances the trap would be exceptionally well-executed, the foe halted and boarded, and commendations would be forthcoming. However, Norrington reminded himself, this was no ordinary pirate with whom they were dealing.  The _Defender_ ’s courage and nerve might not mean a thing.

Jack Sparrow had actually succeeded in running that bar during this storm in spite of capsizing his vessel.  His little accidental envoy had proclaimed his crew’s determination to die before surrendering.  In other words, that pirate was perfectly willing to take his ship down.  Even now, the commodore could detect no hesitation in the _Black Pearl_ ’s headlong flight. Sparrow was hurling her right into the _Defender_.

In something akin to awe, he watched through the misty stew of spume and rain as the great black ship thundered down on the little brig, accelerating down the long fetch of the breakers, pale spray and solid sheets of water flying from her bow and quarters, her bowsprit rising sky-high out of the waves’ troughs, her rudder biting into face of the seas behind her.  Ravaged and laid waste, yet with her straining sails and thrusting masts, her washports pouring the seas that rushed across her decks, she was a magnificent sight. And even without a single gun firing, she was as deadly as she was beautiful.

Commodore Norrington held his breath, hoping Walton would recognize the danger before it was too late.

* * * * *

At the last possible moment, as their crews stared at one another in horror, hearing each other’s loud curses, the _Defender_ wrenched aside from the onrushing _Black Pearl._ Their jib-booms nearly kissed across less than five feet.  For an instant the shadowy, lofty pirate ship loomed over the Navy brig still spitting fire at her, and the next she was soaring past.

She had made it through the last gate out of hell.

Straight as the flight of an albatross the _Black Pearl_ swept into her element, the infinite, cleansing sea, chained no more to the corrupting land.  The exulting voice of the wind rose in crescendo as she passed, a monarch, into her rightful dominion.  Ahead of her was only a wilderness of foam-laced seas stretching out beyond the edge of thought. 

Jack Sparrow’s heart lifted for one wild moment of aching exhilaration. _Freedom_.

* * * * *

TBC

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am participating in a Fanfiction Meet and Greet on Facebook. https://www.facebook.com/events/534912770016041/ My slot is at 1:30 p.m. EST on the 24th of January. Drop by to chat about writing or art and enter a contest for a sketch illustrating one of your favourite fics.


	13. Though the Seas Threaten, They are Merciful

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Now, instead of a battle, it’s a chase. The Black Pearl has a few surprises of her own. She’s not just any ship. Nothing very bad happens. I wonder how I managed that? And the humour is back!

They’d scarce cleared the brig’s bowsprit when Jack was shouting, “Get those mats onto her hull! Now!”

The ship was sucking in seawater faster than the pumps could spit it back out.  They needed to fother the hull without delay or she’d be so water-logged they’d soon lose what ground they’d gained. The _Defender_ skimmed along in their wake, taking shots at the _Black Pearl_ ’s stern whenever she drew close enough, while the _Dauntless_ laboured resolutely behind the swifter ships.  If they wanted to live the day, they dared not give up a fraction of a knot of speed.

Gibbs set some men to hauling up the heavy spare sails that the _Pearl_ ’s wounded crewmembers had sewn back together, then thrummed with wool yarn and oakum, and then greased and tarred.  That was the easy part. The hard part was going to be getting the captain to see sense and stop trying to kill himself.  Without Anamaria for backup, that was going to be a chore. Gibbs wished he could just knock Jack Sparrow out, but that hadn’t worked for the Royal Navy either.

 Nevertheless, he finally succeeded in persuading Jack to let them pry his cramped hands from his ship’s wheel and to allow Kursar to take the helm, in the interests of examining the extent of his ship’s damage himself.

As Captain Sparrow circumnavigated the _Black Pearl_ , encouraging his bone-weary crew, only one man in ten of them really fit for duty, many of them enduring what they insisted were only minor injuries, Gibbs watched him surreptitiously, trying to get used to thinking like the first mate.  Jack’s face looked nearly transparent with fatigue, skin stretched over fine bones to the point of gauntness. He needed sleep, needed time to begin healing. But his men would rest before Jack would, and none of them would see their berths for another day at least, possibly longer. Gibbs hadn’t realized how much they’d depended on Anamaria to read the captain’s mind or to lighten his mood with a spirited exchange of insults or arguments. But she wasn’t here to decipher the confusion Gibbs thought he detected in Jack’s eyes, nor could she interpret the way the captain was trailing his hand along the rail at his ship’s waist.  The captain was Gibbs’ sole responsibility now, and suddenly he felt even more tired, as though the wind he’d thought had been buffeting him, had in actuality been supporting his back.

Finally, Jack turned to him with a puzzled look. “Something’s wrong with the _Pearl_.”

It was Gibbs’ turn to comment that the captain might have to be a bit more specific. There were very few things that weren’t wrong with the ship at the moment.

“She doesn’t know,” Jack explained unhelpfully.

“Know what?” Gibbs wasn’t sure this was a conversation that he was going to understand.

“That Anamaria’s gone.”

Oh how Gibbs really wished Anamaria were not gone because the captain was losing it, and he alone had to decide what to do. Anamaria would probably have told Jack that he was bats and threatened him serious bodily harm if he didn’t betake himself to bed.  Gibbs wished he had her unmitigated gall.

“She’s a ship, Jack,” he said, feeling his way carefully. Jack had always been just a tad illogical about this bloody boat.

The captain looked at him, one eyebrow flown, as though he’d just said the most stupidly obvious thing in the universe. “I did notice,” he said dryly.

 “I mean,” Gibbs fumbled, “she can’t know. Can she?”

Jack looked exasperated. “Of course she knows. Or she should. Anamaria is . . . was,” he stopped for a minute, frowning at the deck, the two lines that had appeared between his brows at the first sight of those Navy ships growing even deeper, “was one of her crew.”  He looked up. “She knows Jip is gone.”

Gibbs wondered if it weren’t Jack who couldn’t believe his first mate was dead.  After all, the captain had seen Jip shot off the ship. But it did seem as though Anamaria might simply be busy on another part of the _Pearl_.  That any minute now she’d be stalking up to them to peel a strip off their hides for wool-gathering at a time like this.

The captain suddenly seemed to make up his mind about something and reversed course.

“Where are you going?” Gibbs asked.

 “To her bow.”

 Where Anamaria had died.  Perhaps it would be good for Jack—help him see that she was really gone.  There were a thousand things Gibbs would rather do than watch Jack go through this. Driving flaming bamboo shoots under his fingernails came to mind. As did a spot of being keelhauled. But a man shouldn’t have to stand alone at such a time. And maybe—well—could be Gibbs himself needed to say good-bye.

“Ye be wantin’ some company?” he asked gruffly.

Jack turned to look at his old friend, relief in his eyes, pressing his fingertips and palms lightly together in a graceful gesture towards Gibbs. “Thank you,” he said quietly. “I would.”

When the two of them reached the stem of the ship, they found they’d been preceded.  Huddled by one splintered knighthead, suffering the repeated punishment of the boarding seas was the slight form of Requin.  Judging from the way the lad’s shoulders were shaking, not all the water on his face was salt or rain. Whether it was the loss of his friend Bjorn or of Anamaria or just this whole wretched bloody day, the kid had lost his grip too soon.  Time enough for that later, if they survived. As mate, Gibbs knew his job was to ream the boy out for malingering and send him back to work.  Anamaria had been very good at that sort of thing. But all Gibbs wanted to do was to hunker down and join him.

 Jack, in his inimitable Sparrow style, did just that. Going down on one knee, he put an arm around Requin, and the lad turned with a small cry and buried his face in the captain’s shoulder. Gibbs couldn’t pick out anything comprehensible other than Anamaria’s name from his thickly accented English, but apparently Jack could.

“It’s not your fault, Requin,” Jack reassured him. “Anamaria does,” he faltered a moment, “did,” he went on deliberately, “what was right by her. You couldn’t have stopped her, lad.”

But the young man wouldn’t be comforted. “And then they broke her,” he sobbed.

“Broke who?” Gibbs asked, confused. “Who did?”

“The _Black Pearl_ ,” Requin answered, anger superceding grief. “Those Navy _cochons_! They shot off her wings.”

“What?” exclaimed Jack, eyes going sharp and calculating.

But not in indignation or in rage as Gibbs would have expected. With disbelief. As though such a thing were not a travesty, but an impossibility.

Abandoning Requin in his puddle of despair as though he had forgotten the boy’s existence, Jack leapt lightly up between the shattered knightheads and stood looking down over the bowsprit that shadowed her figurehead.  The _Black Pearl_ chose that moment to dive through the back of a wave, glassy water and white froth washing hard over her captain, but he scarcely seemed to notice it, one hand balancing himself easily on the least damaged of her knightheads, as though he were one of her spars, stepped somewhere deep on her kelson. 

Gibbs was knocked over and washed halfway down her forecastle before he caught a lifeline. Scrambling to his feet, swearing and bruised, the quartermaster—first mate—he had to get used to thinking that way—headed forward again to try to talk his mad captain out of joining Anamaria in the drink.

Jack’s voice halted him, not so much by what he said, as by the way he said it.

“Mr. Gibbs,” Jack called, a strange, fey exaltation in his voice. “She’s not damaged.”

The figurehead, Gibbs remembered. Requin had said she’d been shot. Jack was always uncommonly soft in the head about that carving. “Well good, good,” he said, limping up to the bow and trying to see for himself.

But there _was_ something wrong with the figurehead. No delicate dark wings spread amidst the haze of spray.  He stared up at the captain, who was grinning gold-bright back at him. This was stretching even Jack’s usual daftness too far.

“Jack?” Gibbs said doubtfully. “Are you all right?”  Not that a madman ever knew he was crazy.

“I’m quite well, Mr. Gibbs, aside from a few broken ribs. Thank you for asking,” Jack said, a touch of his usual swagger to his step as he came back down to the forecastle deck. “

“Moises! Tearlach! Quartetto! Get your lazy arses over here!” the captain shouted, gesturing wildly with his left arm and rather more circumspectly with his right. “Bring some line with you.”

“Jack Sparrow!” Gibbs demanded. “What’s wrong with you?”

Jack turned to him, and Gibbs wished that light in his eyes were normal because it was so good to see it back.

“She’s not damaged, Gibbs,” Jack said softly, and the tone of his voice started a chill at Gibbs heels that ran all the way up to tingle the roots of his hair. “She’s _moved._ ”

* * * * *

They found Anamaria where Jack had known she would be, tucked safely in the hollow under his _Black Pearl_ ’s folded wings. When she had fallen, his ship had indeed taken care of his first mate, as he had asked her to.

Anamaria was injured. He didn’t know how badly. And she seemed only partially conscious as Tearlach braced against the motion of the ship and the crush of water to fix the rope around her. But she was alive. The _Pearl_ had known it. Jack ran his hand along the twisted shards of her knighthead that echoed the feeling in his chest. So much damage to his beautiful ship. Nevertheless she had saved as many of them as she could. He watched as Quartetto and Requin carefully lifted Anamaria onto the forecastle deck. Tightening his fingers around the raw wood, Jack whispered to the _Black Pearl,_ “Thank you, love.”

In spite of the urgent repairs needed on the ship, in spite of the occasional shot the Navy brig was still driving into her hull, in spite of the increasingly dire amount of seawater filling her holds, a surprising number of Jack’s crew, including those hauling the thrummed sails, had found their way to the bow of the ship to witness the miracle of Anamaria’s return from death. 

While his first mate possessed the ability to draw, quarter and flay a man with her tongue, and his crew tended to treat her with the respect due a swift, venomous, and surly adder, every man jack of them knew that Anamaria would take a shot for him when it came right down to it. They cursed her in private, and a few to her face; they fled before her wrath like petrels before a storm; they only challenged her authority once, if that; but now they clustered around her, all overt animosity gone and the hidden caring spilling through in cautious hands that reached to barely brush her arm or her sea-soaked hair, in the babble of jubilant voices, in the hope burning away exhaustion in their eyes as they quietly returned to their tasks. Their captain bided his time and let them have this moment of much needed rejoicing.

In the beginning, Jack had questioned Anamaria’s ability to hold the position of first mate. Once. Very briefly. Followed immediately by a strategic retreat from a belligerent and possibly dangerous Anamaria.  In fact, he had agreed that she should remain as first mate from about halfway up the mainmast ratlines: “God’s teeth woman! You can keep the bloody job for cat’s sake! No need to commit any crimes upon my person! Bloody hell! Haven’t you ever heard o’ talkin’ a matter out?”

She’d certainly justified her faith in herself. Been more than tough enough to subdue the hard, sometimes desperate, often violent hellions who crewed a pirate ship. But not only had his turbulent mate the ability to command these rough men, she also had that something extra that made those same men love her—although not a one of them wouldn’t cut off his little finger before admitting it.  She actually cared whether they lived or died, a luxury usually not afforded in this brutal life.  And so, while aboard the _Black Pearl_ they might grouse about “that bloody bitch,” let any man not of their brotherhood offer her insult and he’d be taking it back or improving his singing voice.

As Marty had once said, “She might be a damn bucko mate, but she’s _our_ damn bucko mate!”

The crowd cleared, returning to their tasks except for the men hoisting the sail over the bow of the _Pearl_ and working it under her bowsprit.  As they dragged it back over the worst of the leaks, the momentum of the ship plastered the cloth to the sides of the ship, driving the thrumming into the cracks.  Water would still get in, but at a much slower rate, one the pumps might have a chance of keeping up with. One layer likely wouldn’t do it, and they would need to add more, but they were limited by the necessity of keeping sufficient canvas on the yards to outrun the _Defender_.

As they worked to give his ship a black canvas hull, Jack was finally able to approach Anamaria where she was now ensconced in Tearlach’s arms, preparatory to moving her to the cabin.  Her dark eyes stared up at him foggily, not quite focusing.  The wrinkle in her forehead and the ragged pace of her breathing told him she was fighting pain.  He took one of her hands, carefully. She’d given them the typical foul weather treatment, and they were bruised and scraped. This one she’d managed to rip a nail out as well.  Against the cold of her skin, his own hands felt burning hot.

Grinning at her, Jack said, “Thought I told you not to let go of the ship.”

* * * * *

Following along with the cluster of men returning aft with the first mate, Joshamee Gibbs had never been so happy for a demotion in his entire life—even if it was to Anamaria. Now the captain was somebody else’s problem.  Though it had turned out that the captain wasn’t nearly as insane as he’d thought.  And what exactly was surprising about that?  Gibbs gave a sigh. This was why he followed orders. Sane or mad, Jack Sparrow never left more than his tail feathers in a slammed door.

Whatever she’d been through, Anamaria appeared to be reviving. She lifted her head a little from where it rested on Tearlach’s impressive bicep.

“Wha’ ‘appened?” she asked as though her tongue was three times too big. 

“ _La_ _Perle Noire_!” Requin answered eagerly, too excited to attempt English. “ _Elle vous a sauvé_!”

Anamaria appeared to understand him. She closed her eyes and laid her head back again. “Tha’s m’ bonny lass,” she murmured. 

To the ship Gibbs decided.  She and Jack were two of a kind. Always treating the _Pearl_ as if she were their skin and they merely her internal organs.

Jack just smiled and stroked the nearest piece of his ship, which at that point happened to be the capstan.

Then the first mate frowned again and lifted her head, her eyes decidedly clearer and fiercer. The unnatural calm was almost over, Gibbs judged. Full Anamaria storms were just ahead. 

“The _Dauntless_?” she asked.

“She’s eatin’ our dust—mud—whatever it is,” Gibbs supplied.  “She’s drinkin’ our wake, anyway, lass,” And wasn’t that a beautiful thought?  If he never saw that behemoth of a warship again for the rest of his life, Gibbs decided he would die a happy man.

At that moment one of the _Defender_ ’s bow chaser shots connected with the _Black Pearl_ ’s stern in a splintering crash.

“What’s that?” Anamaria jerked in Tearlach’s grip.

“That would be the _Defender_ ,” Jack explained. “Persistent little bugger. We may have trouble shakin’ her off our tail.” He opened the door into his cabin. “There’s better light in here.”

There was indeed, and not just because of the windows.  At least two shots had penetrated the room, leaving a carnage of splinters and scattered effects. The captain looked pained but said nothing. Gibbs noticed his quick glance at the hopelessly water-damaged books. Anamaria’s writing supplies were scattered by the port bulkhead, the ink leaving a dark stain. Had it really been this same day that he’d come in to the welcoming warmth of this room to find Jack and Anamaria relaxed and busy, with the _Pearl_ ’s crew whole and hale in the forecastle? Gibbs felt an unaccustomed tremor in his bones. So few hours to change everything—forever.

Duncan was still in the captain’s bed, asleep or unconscious. His wound had been stitched up, and he had a splint on the arm he must have broken when the ship rolled down.  He didn’t rouse when Jack had Gibbs move him over, and there was a distinct haze of rum about him.  Duncan was feeling no pain at the moment.

Tearlach gently deposited Anamaria on the mattress beside him while Jack bustled about, digging in a broken trunk jammed up against the port bulkhead for a slightly less damp woolen blanket to wrap around his shivering first mate’s shoulders.

 “Now,” said Jack, “Let’s take a look at that. Somebody get that lantern lit—they’ve got fire in the wardroom. And bring some fresh water and some rum while you’re at it. Oh, and see if Peytoe’s got a spare moment.”

“Aye, sir.” Requin rushed off to do his bidding.

The “that” Jack was looking at was the bloody mess of Anamaria’s right leg. 

“I think you’ve been bled enough t’ satisfy any leech,” the captain said wryly. “Time t’ put a stop t’ that.”  He turned to his quartermaster. “Gibbs, get me a stick.” His eyes roamed his damaged cabin briefly. “Seems there’s plenty of ‘em now.”

There certainly was. Gibbs didn’t even have to move to be able to bend down and pick out a splinter of the appropriate length and width. Jack ripped a strip of fabric off the sheet on the bed, slipped it carefully under Anamaria’s thigh and tied it loosely. He held out a hand for the stick, slid it under the bandage and twisted it into a tight ligature to slow the bleeding.

“Not too tight, is it?” he asked Anamaria.

She shook her head.

Gently, the captain tried to separate the wreck of her boot and the fabric of her breeches from the torn flesh, but apparently gentle wasn’t going to be enough. Gibbs noticed Anamaria’s fists clench in the soiled coverlet and her eyes close into tight black lines in bruised-looking circles.

“Is it broken?” she asked through gritted teeth.

“Can’t tell yet,” Jack said, concentrating. “I don’t think so. But your leg’s opened up from your ankle to above your knee right down to the bone. Looks like a tidy few splinters in there t’ keep it interestin’.”

“Splendid!” Anamaria gasped. “Oww! Damn it, Jack!”

“Sorry,” he said. “Don’t think I can make this any easier.”

“Then at least wait for that rum,” she complained breathlessly.

“Good idea,” Jack agreed. “I could use some rum.”

“Wretch!” Anamaria punched at him weakly.

 “Souse,” Jack shot back. “Don’t worry. You’ll get your fair share.”

The captain and the first mate were trading insults again. Part of the world started to return to normal for Gibbs. The Anamaria storm was almost back in force.

As Jack sat back on the edge of the bed, Anamaria relaxed a little and stared over at Duncan. Particularly at his stitches. They were a workman-like affair. Did the job. Closed the wound like they were supposed to. Well, all right, Gibbs admitted. They were ragged and unsightly and wandered about like a duck’s tracks. Duncan was going to have an interesting scar.

Anamaria’s eyes widened a little. “Oh no,” she said firmly. “No and no and no.”

Jack followed her gaze and raised a brow. “That’s . . . a mighty . . . ‘creative’ piece of needlework there, ain’t it, love?”

Anamaria glared at him. “There is no way in nine hells I’m lettin’ that butcher near my leg! You up to stitchin’ a sampler, Captain?”

Gibbs didn’t blame her. The captain was known for having a deft hand with the needle. Claimed Bootstrap had taught him well.

“Oh, aye,” Jack grinned at her. He peered at her leg, hands hovering in mock measurement over the wound. He tilted his head consideringly.  “Looks like I’ll be able t’ fit in the entire alphabet and a Lord’s Prayer.”

Anamaria huffed a small laugh.  “And a little ship. Don’t forget the little ship.”

“With the Jolly Roger flyin’, love,” Jack agreed accommodatingly, “Might have t’ leave off the ‘Amen’, though.”

“Ain’t that some kind o’ blasphemy?” Gibbs asked.

Jack still had his eyes on his restored first mate. He shook his head with a soft chime of ornaments. “I’m not feelin’ blasphemous at the moment, Mr. Gibbs,” he said, and his voice was uncommonly serious.

Aye, they had some gratitude to be spending somewhere, Gibbs reflected. He himself was inordinately thankful to be delivered, not from evil, he smirked, but from good.  As the _Pearl_ shuddered under another impact, he amended that to “almost” delivered.

A commotion in the doorway heralded the return of Requin with the lantern and the ship’s cook, Peytoe.  Behind them, Pintel and Ragetti hauled a barrel of rum.

Jack looked startled. “I admit, I’m fair dry,” he said. “But ain’t that a bit much?”

“I could not find a mug,” Requin explained, hanging the lantern up over the bed. “Or even a bottle. Everything loose, _il a été enlevé_.” He made motions to indicate the water washing through the ship. “Or it is broken. And we have _trop peu_ of water that is not, how do you say, full of the salt?”

Jack sighed. “Thank you, Requin. That will do fine.  Now you and Tearlach see to rigging any spare canvas we have left to collect rain water.”

“Aye, sir.” And Requin rushed off again, followed by the more slowly moving Tearlach.

Gibbs reflected that Tearlach said less than Cotton and Cotton couldn’t talk.

Dismissing Peytoe as well, Jack beckoned to the rum-bearers. Pintel and Ragetti lurched into the room and thumped the barrel onto the tabletop, blocking it up to keep it from rolling with the ship.

“This is looking more like a party every minute,” Jack said. “Gibbs, have you still got your flask?”

“Aye, Cap’n,” Gibbs said, pulling it out and handing it to him. “But it’s bloody empty. I must’ve drunk it.”

For a moment Jack turned the familiar object in his hands and a shadow shivered across his face. Anamaria reached out, her fingertips barely brushing his knee.  The two of them exchanged looks.  Anamaria reading the captain’s mind again, Gibbs supposed. Whatever was behind that momentary chill, Anamaria knew.  Squaring his shoulders, Jack leaned forward and opened the spigot on the barrel to fill the flask for the first of many purely medicinal drinks.

“Jack Sparrow,” said Anamaria warningly, “if you get so drunk you mess up my leg, I swear I will stitch your fingers to your arse.”

“If _I_ were you,” Jack said in a tone of longsuffering kindly advice, handing her the flask first. “ I wouldn’t be in such a hurry t’ rile up the man that was goin’ t’ be stickin’ steel in _my_ flesh.”

“I, on the other hand, am plannin’ t’ get as drunk as a lord,” Anamaria proclaimed, downing the contents of the flask in one gulp. 

Gibbs knew what that was like. That overwhelming desire to be numb.  A few flasks later and Anamaria was beginning to look normal. She was also beginning to notice things. Like the captain, for instance.

“Why isn’t your arm in that sling, Jack Sparrow?” Anamaria’s tone was menacing enough to make Pintel and Ragetti, who were hovering in the hope that eventually that flask might move their way, edge for the door.

“What?” Jack looked down, startled, at his free right arm and the cloth dangling around his neck. He started ineffectually trying to stuff his arm back in the sling.  “Oh, this. Well, I couldn’t very well take the helm with only one arm in these seas, could I?” he explained reasonably, giving up the attempt to return to an acceptable state of invalidism so that Anamaria might forget that she’d caught him out.

 It wouldn’t have worked anyway. Anamaria sat up with battle lights in her eyes. “What the bloody blue blazes were you tryin’ t’ do that for, you addlepated ninnyhammer? Were you tryin’ t’ kill yourself?”

Jack gazed admiringly at her. “I have three words for you, madam,” he said succinctly.   
”Pot. Kettle. Black.”

Then he dodged as her hand came up. “Gentlemen,” said Jack happily, bouncing to his feet. “I do believe I’m about t’ get slapped again. So if you’ll excuse me . . .” he whisked out the door, then stuck his head back in. “I’ll just be gettin’ me embroidery floss.”

They heard him wandering away muttering, “Pink. Definitely pink.”

Anamaria sagged back against the mattress. “Just how _did_ we get away from that ship?” she asked Gibbs.

Gibbs shrugged. “Cap’n went a little nuts when they gave him the news you was gone. Insisted on takin’ the helm himself.  Had a little talk with his ship. Told her she could fly without canvas and sail without a hull,” he shook his head, baffled, “and she believed him and did it.”

Anamaria stared at him.

“She did it for a curse, once,” Pintel offered.

Ragetti ducked his head. “Reckon she did it for love, this time,” he mumbled shyly.

The room was silent for a long time, except for the ceaseless lament of the injured ship around them as the sea surged against her.

Then Jack returned, popping his head in and asking daftly, “Is the coast clear?”

“I won’t be knockin’ your head off if that’s what y’ mean,” Anamaria growled.

“That’ll do,” the captain said, swishing into the room. He leaned forward looking earnest and wide-eyed. “Now I’ve got an extensive selection of colours for the well-stitched pirate,” he exclaimed enthusiastically, flourishing his hand. “First we have black. Fine colour for the first mate of the _Black Pearl_. Then we have black again. What a coincidence! Goes very well with black sails.  Finally we have—black. Just like your lovely hair, my lady. Which will it be?”

“I’ll take the black that goes with my hair, you loon,” Anamaria grinned.

“Sorry I couldn’t find a thread o’ pink on th’ whole ship,” Jack apologized, coming to sit at the foot of the bed again.

 “I’ll forgive you this time, but don’t let it happen again,” Anamaria said generously.

“Now,” said Jack. “This is the fun part. No water, so I’m goin’ t’ have t’ clean this out with rum.”

Anamaria nodded grimly. “I know.”

Jack looked up and noticed Pintel and Ragetti still there. “Haven’t I given you somethin’ t’ do?” he asked.

They shook their heads in unison.

“Well, I’m doin’ it now, mates,” Jack flapped his hands at them. “Get, scoot, scat, go splice some lines.”

The two of them vanished as though conjured away.

“You want me t’ go, too, Cap’n?” Gibbs asked.

“What d’ y’ say, love?” Jack asked Anamaria. “Do we need him t’ stay? This ain’t goin’ t’ feel like a pat on the back, is it?”

Anamaria swallowed hard. “I’ll be fine.”

“You heard the lady,” Jack waved at Gibbs. “Tough as boot leather. Don’t need anyone t’ hold _her_ hand.”

“I’d take another drink, though,” Anamaria said.

“We’ll give this back t’ you later,” Jack held up the flask. “After we’ve got the lass thoroughly on the lee lurch, and I’ve had my dastardly way with her!” He leered at Anamaria and ducked the inevitable left hook.

Gibbs laughed out loud. He hadn’t thought he’d ever laugh again, but suddenly Jack and Anamaria were laughing with him, although it made Jack wince. It was just so good to be alive and together.

Gibbs met the eyes of that infuriating woman he’d missed so much when he’d thought she was gone forever. “It’s bad weather, and we got the Navy shootin’ at our arse,” he said gruffly. “I guess that means it’s my watch.” And he headed for the door.

Anamaria’s lips curled up in an amused smile as she watched him go. “Let me know,” she called after him, “when it clears.”

* * * * *

TBC

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Translations:  
> Cochons—pigs   
> La Perle Noire!—The Black Pearl!  
> Elle vous a sauvé!—She saved you!  
> il a été enlevé—it was washed away  
> trop peu—too little


	14. He Jests at Scars Who Never Felt a Wound

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The chase continues. The Navy pursues. Jack finishes his needlework. (My only excuse is too many conversations between a nurse and a pathologist at the dinner table.) H/C but the snark is extreme. The alphabet and Latin—can that possibly be made interesting?

Anamaria decided that it was worse to expect pain than actually to experience it. The needle and thread and rum awaited, lurking ominously, inciting in her imagination images she’d rather not contemplate. In the bobbing light of the lantern, she watched the captain moving about his cabin, searching among the debris and damaged furniture for the materials he needed.  Each item he added to the array on the table sent a little spike of foreshadowing agony up her leg. Cloths for cleaning the wound—her flesh writhed at the thought. A slender dagger, its blade drawn slowly through the lantern flame to clear it off—her pulse drummed too fast in her ears.  The roll of heavy leather, well-tooled with the marks of teeth—her stomach had a brief argument with the rum. A bucket—in case she lost that argument, she supposed. She tried to tell herself that the intense flame of pain enveloping her leg could not get any worse, but she could not make herself believe it.

Give her a nice sharp sword cut in the heat of a fight any day.

Too soon, Jack was ready. She had to help ease him out of his coat because of his ribs— and wasn’t he going to be getting vengeance on her for that bit of doctoring! Then he rolled up his sleeves over much-scarred forearms in which the muscles slid like taut halyards with his motion. In silence, his slender, rough hands adjusted the position of her leg in the light. It always surprised her how that strength in him could be restrained into such gentleness.

She was so very glad it was him and not Peytoe.

Jack settled himself in a chair by the bed and picked up the leather roll. He held it up to her, a question in his eyes.

She didn’t want the thing. But she knew she might need it. Reluctantly, she reached for it.  With a grimace that put an answering wry quirk in Jack’s own mouth, she bit down on the disgusting object. The first part was going to be the worst.

Finally, Jack spoke. “Ready, darlin’?”

She was never going to be ready. But she nodded anyway.

At the first splash of rum in the wound, Anamaria’s world dissolved into white fire. She hadn’t thought she would scream. But when the pain ebbed enough for her to see and hear again, her throat hurt and there were tears on her cheeks. She figured she was glad for that awful piece of leather; otherwise she’d probably have been joining Cotton in parrot ownership. Her jaw ached. Her hands were gripping the cloth she was lying on so hard that they’d started to bleed again. She’d been wrong. Experiencing pain was worse.

Jack was on his feet again, bent over her, one arm braced across her thighs with his weight holding her legs down, while he concentrated on removing the edges of her boot from the wound, now that he’d softened the material. The expression on his face was grim, his lips thinned and pressed hard together. He looked up, sensing her gaze on him. “You with me again, love?” he asked, lightly enough, though his eyes looked strained.

Anamaria nodded. She attempted to slow her panicked breaths. _Just relax_ , she tried to tell her body. _This ain’t goin’ to kill you_. Her body wasn’t convinced. Her mind thought death sounded like a good idea right about now.

By the time Jack had removed her boot and cut away the leg of her breeches from the gash, the muscles and tendons of Anamaria’s neck were cramped from holding her jaw so tight, and her whole body was shuddering. Even though she felt chilled through the bone, she was sweating.

“Need a break?” Jack asked.

She shook her head. _Just get it over with._

Jack thoroughly soaked a cloth and bent over to begin cleaning out the wound. He might as well have been gnawing it off at the knee. The air was thick with the coppery scent of blood and the sweet sting of rum as they flowed in crimson patterns over her leg. Anamaria felt her stomach lurch in an attempt to abandon ship. She spat out the leather.

“Bucket!” she gasped as she leaned over the edge of the bed.

He glanced up quickly. “You’re not goin’ to . . .” But he knew that look. “Oh, you are.” He grabbed the bucket and whisked it under her head in the nick of time. With his other bloodstained hand he caught her hair away from her face.

Having parted company with the last of the rum she’d consumed, Anamaria sagged back against the mattress.

“Feelin’ better?” Jack inquired solicitously.

“Depends what you’re comparin’ it to,” Anamaria managed.

Picking up the discarded leather roll, Jack offered it to her. “Ready for another round?”

“No,” Anamaria said. “But I guess I don’t have much choice.”

“Got to be done, sooner or later,” Jack agreed. “These splinters ain’t goin’ t’ do you any good. And you’re bleedin’ all over me bed.” He offered the leather again.

Anamaria shook her head. “I think I can handle it now.”

Jack’s brow crept up to brush his scarf. “You sure?”

“Aye,” Anamaria sighed. “And I’m feelin’ the need t’ send a few things to the devil.”

“Ah!” said Jack, enlightened. “Go ahead, love.  No point in takin’ this like a Spartan. Turn the air as blue as you need to. I won’t hold anythin’ you say about me against you, under the circumstances.” He frowned at her, considering. “On the other hand, if you hit me or start kickin’, I promise I’ll get Gibbs to come hold you down.” He placed the well-bitten roll within easy reach of her hand. “It’s there if you need it.”

And with that threat secured over her head, he returned to the task of probing her torn flesh for shards of the _Pearl_ ’s erstwhile spritsail yard.

Anamaria took him at his word.  She consigned the Royal Navy, collectively and individually to any number of perditions. She waxed eloquently blasphemous over several pantheons. As Jack searched for the deadly scraps of wood in the ruin of her leg with tender, relentless fingertips, using the point of the knife to work them free, she called him the worst names she could think of, cast aspersions on his ancestors to the third and forth generation, and accused him of indecent relations with a multitude of inappropriate objects, animate and inanimate. 

When she paused to gasp for breath, he’d calmly suggest a few more.  “Try that one love.  Got it off an Italian mercenary. Does wonders.”

When she pressed him for a translation, he evaded her playfully. “What does it mean? Now do you really expect me t’ tell an innocent lass like yourself any such thing?”

Occasionally he’d raise an eyebrow. “Now that’s a new one.”

Once he’d looked intrigued. “I really think that’s quite impossible, darlin’, but as soon as you’re feelin’ more the thing, I’d be willin’ t’ experiment.”

Altogether, he kept her pain so edged with laughter that she didn’t know which was more responsible for the wetness of her cheeks and the trembling of her body. And almost, she could ignore the occasional horrifying scrape of steel on bone.

The pitch and roll of the ship moving through the storm did not seem to affect the sureness of Jack’s hands in the least. The little pile of bloody shards and slivers grew on the tabletop. But when the cabin shuddered with the impact of a shot from the _Defender_ , the tip of the blade he’d been working under a deeply-driven splinter sliced into her.

“Jack!” Anamaria cried out, reflexes taking over, coiling away from him.

“Shit!” Jack snatched the knife away. The splinter twisted. “Sorry!”

“Oh god, oh god!” Anamaria was whimpering now.

Jack dropped the knife and steadied her with his hands, “Shhhh. Easy now, love,” he soothed. “Deep breaths. Try not to move your leg. You’ll only make it worse. I’m sorry about that.” He glared at the cracked timbers where the shot had nearly penetrated the cabin. “Bloody, sodding Navy!”

Letting him return her to her original position, Anamaria lay there breathless for the moment. Her leg was pulsing to the beat of her heart until she thought it must explode. Jack did not immediately resume his work, for which she was grateful. She noticed his hands weren’t quite steady as he picked up the knife again. He stared at the blade, rotating it so the light ran along the reddened steel.

“Somehow,” said Jack reflectively, “when I pictured you in this cabin on this bed sayin’ those words, this wasn’t exactly what I had in mind.”

Anamaria threw the leather roll at his head. It missed by a handspan. Which said plenty about how shaken she was. Anamaria never missed a shot like that.  But it helped—to be angry again, instead of terrified.

Silently, Jack retrieved the hated object and returned it to her reach. He smiled at her, though she could see the lines of tension about his mouth. “Breathin’ fire again, my dragon lady?”

Huffing a tiny breath of laugh, Anamaria gave up. It was impossible to stay mad at Jack Sparrow—the incorrigible flirt. Particularly when she suspected he was being extra outrageous just to redirect her attention from what he was going to have to continue doing to her.

“Carry on.” She gave a grand wave. “Time to get this torture over with.”

“Aye, aye, ma’am,” Jack saluted comically.

Four hundred and ninety years later, give or take, he laid aside the knife, brushed away the sweat that had been dripping off his nose for the past three hundred or so of those years with one crimson-soaked sleeve, and sighed. “All clear, love. Or as clear as I can see to make it.”

Anamaria opened her eyes. They’d been silent for some time now. She’d given in and replaced the leather roll about the time she’d bitten her lip until it bled. Grinding her teeth into the heavy surface, she’d simply endured, leaving gory handprints clasped on the coverlet, concentrating on the sound of her breathing and the rhythm of her heart.

Jack reached over with a relatively clean cloth and blotted her face. “Still survivin’?”

She nodded and spat out the gag. Her breath still sounded far too fast and loud. She only wanted one thing—well, one that she could actually have. “Rum!” she said hoarsely.

“Not heeled over far enough, eh love?” Jack asked, getting up to re-fill the flask.

“Not stoppin’ ‘til ‘m capsized,” she replied with conviction, although her voice was shaking.

Her voice wasn’t the only thing. When she tried to take the flask from Jack, her hands wouldn’t cooperate and she nearly dropped it.

The captain snatched it to safety from her fumbling fingers. “Oh no you don’t,” he scolded. “Wastin’ good rum’s a particularly heinous crime, ‘round here.”

But when he held the flask for her, she discovered that her neck was included in the revolution the rest of her body was staging, and she couldn’t even keep her head up.

“Hmmph,” Jack snorted. “Do I have to do everything for you, woman?”

Nevertheless, his hand was gentle as he awkwardly reached around her to support her shoulders with his more functional left arm. With his other hand he touched the flask to her lips.

“We are a pair of shipwrecks, aren’t we?” he commented as she downed gulps of rum she scarcely tasted.

When she’d had enough, he eased her head back to the bed and sampled the rum himself. “Ah!” he sighed. “Nectar of the gods.” He set the empty flask back on the table and massaged the small of his back.

The captain had been bent over her leg for an awfully long time, Anamaria reflected, although not as long as it had seemed.

“Gettin’ stiff, old man?” she teased, reviving slightly under the influence of the alcohol. “That experiment won’t work at all if you are.”

“Trust me,” said Jack suggestively. “If it’s possible at all, I am _not_ too stiff.”

“Every time I trust you,” Anamaria reflected, “I end up fightin’ undead pirates, or vengeful cuckolds, or jealous lightskirts, or wrathful shopkeepers, or self-righteous do-gooders, or insulted holy men, or panicked merchants, or disturbed wild beasts, or greedy privateers, or dead-eye marines, or bloody commodores with battleships.  And then you don’t want me t’ kill ‘em! ’M not sure trustin’ you is so good for my health.”

“Course it is,” Jack insisted. “You’d have died of boredom long before this, hangin’ about in a bay callin’ ‘Here fishy, fishy!’ Besides,” he continued, “you have to admit I patch you up beautifully.”

Anamaria simply fixed him with her best “You have got to be kidding!” look.

Jack eyed the ruin of her leg and shut up. “Well then,” he said cheerfully after a minute—if a bit hollowly, “time to start that pretty sampler.”

“I guess it’s got to happen,” Anamaria sighed.

As Jack began to thread the needle, frowning at it fiercely as though to scare the thread through the hole, Anamaria closed her eyes again. This wasn’t going to be any worse than what she’d already lived through, but there was something unnatural about shoving steel through one’s flesh on purpose, and she’d rather not watch.

She felt Jack’s quiet, skilled touch as he brought the ragged edges of the gash together, then the tiny nip of the needle tip sliding into her skin. In spite of her best intentions, her breath hissed through her teeth.

“A,” said Jack whimsically. “‘A’ for ‘Anamaria’ and ‘astrolabe’ and ‘anaconda.’”

Reading lessons. The daft fool was giving her reading lessons while he sewed up her leg. God, she loved this man.  A watery smile worked its way past her permanent grimace.

“And ‘apple’ and ‘a-lee’ and ‘abbey-lubber,’” she whispered.

“Which is what you’ll be,” Jack suggested provocatively as he tied the knot.

“’Ass,’” said Anamaria with satisfaction. “Which is what you are.”

Flourishing his needle, Jack started on the next stitch. “ ‘B’,” he said. “For ‘the _Black Pearl’_ and ‘bee-blocks’ and ‘broadside.’”

Another shot rocked the ship. Jack flinched as though it had struck him.  “And bloody British brigs, may the devil take ‘em all.”

He’d stopped working, so Anamaria opened her eyes. Jack was rubbing his eyes tiredly with the backs of his wrists. “Don’t they ever give up?” he asked when he saw her looking.

“Of course not,” she said. “You’re Captain Jack Sparrow, don’t y’ know!”

That won her a bitter laugh. But he shook off whatever he was thinking, tightened his jaw and resumed his needlework. “ ‘B’ for ‘banana’ and ‘boom-jigger.’”

“And the ‘bats in your belfry,’” Anamaria managed, though her teeth clenched around the words.

“Annnndddd . . . ,” Jack drew out the word as though he was having a really bad idea, “for . . .”

“Stop it right there while you’re still alive, Captain!” Anamaria didn’t open her eyes, but she pointed one nail-less forefinger in the direction of his head.

So she was utterly shocked when she felt the soft brush of a kiss on her fingertip. “For the beautiful, brave lass who saved my ship,” Jack finished.

“Nice save,” she muttered, pulling her hand back as though he’d bitten it.

Jack knotted the second stitch before responding. “’T weren’t a joke, love,” he said soberly. “I haven’t said it yet, but thank you.”

“’Tweren’t nothin’,” Anamaria said, embarrassed. “Just my job.”

“It was everything,” Jack countered. “And it almost cost us too much.”

“Ain’t no price too much for freedom,” Anamaria said. “And you know it, Jack Sparrow. That’s why you let her run.”

He was quiet for a moment, hands still and resting against her leg. “I do know it,” he said finally. “Thank you.”

Uncomfortably, Anamaria reminded him, “You got twenty-four more letters t’ go, an’ the Lord’s Prayer, so you might want t’ quit lollygaggin’.”

Jack gave a soft snort and picked up his needle. “You’re an odd sort of female, Anamaria. You’d rather take a needle in the leg than a compliment.”

“’M better with insults,” Anamaria muttered. “ ‘C’,” she supplied, to turn the topic, “for ‘Cotton’ and ‘cathead’ and ‘crazy captain.’”

Sighing in resignation, Jack took the stitch. “ ‘C’,” he agreed. “For ‘crabby, cantankerous chucklehead.’”

Anamaria choked a laugh.  Then, as the unremitting ordeal continued, she set her teeth and thought of the alphabet.

* * * * *

She tried not to interrupt the captain at his work but by the time he’d got to the letter ‘P’ for ‘Parrot’ and ‘parsnip’ and ‘peagoose,’ and a particularly mangled bit of her leg, she’d been unable to hold on one minute longer.

“Stop! Jack, I can’t . . .” she gasped.

He instantly removed his hands. “Too much? That’s all right. We’ll stop.”

The cold sweat soaking her already wet body, the tremors she couldn’t remove from her hands no matter how she clenched her fists, the frenzied drum of her pulse that would not slow down made Anamaria feel idiotic and weak. As Jack dried her forehead again, she swatted his hand away angrily. “I hate this!” she snapped with a despicable high note in her voice. “I should be able to take this.”

If Jack had been sympathetic she would have bitten him.

But he simply looked quizzically at her and offered, “I could knock you over the head.”

That surprised a half-sobbing laugh out of her. “And let you embroider who knows what on my leg?” she asked, with a little of the old spark back in her voice. “I’ve got t’ keep my eye on you, Jack Sparrow.”

He leaned over her with that wide-eyed expression that made her swear the one solitary thought in his head was dying of loneliness, and batted his eyelashes. “Enjoy the view, darlin’!”

What with the smears of kohl and her blood added to the traces from his own head wound, Jack’s face was actually looking particularly awful.  “You look worse than me,” Anamaria informed him.

“That’s as may be,” Jack said loftily, “but we all know you look excessively lovely, so I must still be quite the show.”

“I’ll have you know, I’m trying not to throw up,” Anamaria complained. “And you’re making it very hard.”

“That’s my job,” Jack smirked. “Pain and puking with Jack Sparrow are better than wine and dancing with any other man.”

He would not have been half so annoying if he hadn’t been right. And it was frustrating to have to be so grateful to the man for stirring up a fight with her when she really needed one.

“If you can see around that bloated self-opinion of yours,” she told him, “Perhaps you could get on with the needlepoint. I’m sure you have better things t’ be doin’.”

She should have remembered that Jack Sparrow never fought fair. The cheery, compassionate battle-light in his eyes shifted to something darker and smouldering until Anamaria thought the fabric under her head must be catching fire. With a slow caress, he drew the backs of two fingers along the undamaged side of her calf, the way she had often seen him stroke the _Black Pearl_.  His voice lowered to star-shimmering, tropical midnight velvet. “I can’t think of a single one, love.”

Damn the man! She was glad she was in too much pain to react to that note in his voice, to that touch, to . . . All right she needed to be in more pain.

“Sew!” she commanded, the word quivering with conviction.

Jack raised his hands in surrender. “As you wish, my lady,” he agreed, all brisk business again.

She would not be sorry.

Then the bite of the needle removed all thoughts of regrets or Jack Sparrow’s damnable allure.  Anamaria welcomed the pain. 

“ ‘Q’,” he continued, as though they’d never been interrupted, “for ‘quartermaster,’ ‘quinte,’ and ‘Quetzalcoatl,’”

“That ain’t a word,” Anamaria said firmly. “You’re cheatin’. Though why I should be surprised at that . . .”

“Is too a word.” Jack defended his problematic honour. “Quetzalcoatl is one of those Aztec gods.”

Anamaria shuddered. “Why you wantin’ to know the name of one o’ them?”

“Oh, he’s one of the nice ones,” Jack said airily. “Feathered snaky guy. Real reasonable. Not in the least bloodthirsty.”

“Well, good. The two of you ought t’ get along just dandy,” Anamaria said, marveling again at the eclectic trivia Jack stored in that thick skull of his.

“Besides, I know ‘em all,” Jack continued offhandedly. “Decided it was best t’ have an idea who I might be runnin’ across one of these days. What their angle was, as it were. Most of their people are gone, now. So they haven’t a lot to do but rattle around gettin’ meddlesome.”

He tied off the knot, trimmed the stitch, and contemplated his handiwork. “Very nice, if I do say so myself.” 

“And you always do,” Anamaria remarked dryly, congratulating herself on keeping any and all hitches out of her voice.

* * * * *

Jack gave her another respite at the end of the alphabet, although she hadn’t asked him to. “No need to push this,” he explained.

“What’s a zebra?” Anamaria asked curiously between deep breaths to relax.

“Stripy sort of donkey thing,” Jack told her. “Find ‘em in Africa. Wild. No use whatsoever, but striking t’ look at.”

“Oh,” said Anamaria. “You mean like a pirate captain.”

Jack glared at her indignantly.

“All right, all right. I take it back,” Anamaria conceded.

“Except for the striking to look at?” Jack prodded.

Anamaria rolled her eyes. “Fribble,” she accused.

Jack smirked.

It was rather ironic that he should know more about Africa than she did.

With that uncanny ability of his, Jack seemed to read her mind. “You’ve never been there, have you?” he asked.  “Africa, I mean.”

She shook her head. “My father’s father was from there, but I never knew him.”

“We’ll go there,” Jack decided enthusiastically. “There are all sorts of weird things to see.  Course the Europeans have messed up the port towns, but we’ll take a camel and go visit the underground Coptic temples in Abyssinia, or maybe we’ll hop an elephant and go see zebras and wildebeests and gnus and lions.”

“What’s a camel?”

“Um,” Jack considered. “Something like a horse, but . . . um . . . with a hump, or two, on its back . . .”

“A hump.”

“Swear to God,” Jack said earnestly, his hands trying to describe the strange creature in the air. “And a droopy nose and big flat feet with toes and a really terrible disposition—spits at you for no reason at all.” He paused. “Rather like a first mate, come to think of it.”

“Jack,” Anamaria warned.

“But really beautiful brown eyes. Big. You could melt right into them,” Jack added hurriedly. He eyed her warily. “All right, I take it back, too.”

“How clever of you,” Anamaria said coldly. “I really think you should start the Lord’s Prayer. You’re goin’ t’ need it.”

Jack picked up the needle again. “But you’ll go to Africa with me?” he asked hopefully.

Anamaria gave up. “Yes, you unprincipled baboon. Yes, I’ll go with you anywhere you want to go.”

At Jack’s alert look, she quickly amended. “Have to, don’t I? We’re on the same boat, and last I checked I couldn’t walk on water.”

Damn! She had to be careful what she promised that man. It wasn’t fair that he had her drunk and half out of her mind with pain. He’d never promised her a thing except to be her captain when she’d signed his articles, and she had no reason to expect he ever would.  If Captain Jack Sparrow had plighted his troth to any woman, it was to the _Black Pearl_. And Anamaria had no intentions of giving up anything she couldn’t afford to lose—least of all her heart. Not without adequate ransom. She was a pirate, after all. Take what you can; give nothing back.  She could never forget that Jack was, too.

Still, she didn’t know how to interpret Jack’s small shrug as he resumed his employment.

“ _Pater noster_ ,” he murmured, and the thread tightened, stinging.

“Latin?” Anamaria winced. “You want me to learn Latin now?”

“Why not?” Jack asked. “Lots of good stuff written in it. _Qui es in caelis_.” He took another stitch.

“You’re mad,” Anamaria said firmly.

“I’m just doin’ a proper sampler,” Jack argued. “And it’s one in the eye for the ol’ church of England. Now stop squirming.”

“I am not squirming,” she protested.

“I know a squirm when I see one. _Sanctificetur nomen tuum,_ ” Jack said virtuously and reinserted the needle. “There. You did it again. Squirm. Now be still or I’ll switch to _Arma virumque cano_!”

“I gather that’s a threat,” Anamaria said through clenched teeth. “And I was just shifting. That bloody hurts!”

“Virgil’s _Aenied_ ,” Jack said with relish, tying off the thread. “‘I sing of men and arms.’ Twelve books long. You’d look like a tapestry instead of a sampler. Ragetti can tell you all about it. It’s his favourite story.  It’ll hurt worse if you don’t keep still.  _Adveniat regnum tuum_.”

Anamaria gritted her teeth and suffered in silence until Jack reached _Sed libera nos a malo._

“How many more?” she asked, not sure she wanted the answer.

Jack measured the remaining gap in her leg with his hand and compared it to the stitched portion. “’Bout sixteen more, I’d say. I’ve put in thirty-eight. Plenty enough for the little ship and her flag.  And the _Amen._ ”

And he added stitch thirty-nine.

“Bloody hell,” said Anamaria with feeling.

“Amen,” said Jack, scrubbing at his sweating face with his gory sleeve.  “This’ll about do me in.”

Anamaria glared at him, “Do _you_ in? Just whose leg is it that’s gettin’ drilled full of holes anyway?”

“Calm down, lass,” Jack soothed. “You’ll carry the honours for the most sufferin’. No worries about that. But I might point out that I am missin’ a couple of key ribs to which I was extremely attached.”

Of course. She had forgotten about that in her own agony. Jack must be half-dead.  Concern for him overrode any thought of herself. “Are you going to be all right?” she asked contritely. “You need to get your arm back in that sling. Here, give me that needle. I’ll finish it myself.”

“Now just hold on one bloody minute, you madwoman!” Jack batted her hand away.  “Did I say I couldn’t do this? I don’t recall hearin’ myself say any such thing. You can’t even sit up by yourself, you ridiculous creature. Now. Stop. Squirming. Or I swear it’s Virgil and the foundin’ of Rome for you!” With pigheaded determination, he set about making the next stitch. “And now for the fun part. ‘Keel.’”

Anamaria subsided, knowing he was right, but worrying over him like a dog with a bone. She scarcely paid attention to the misery traveling towards her knee as she searched for signs of fatigue and pain in Jack—the lack of grace in his posture, the set of his jaw as he worked, the extra line by his mouth, the slight flare of his nostrils as he breathed, the way his skin was drawn harshly over the fine structure of his face. The way he winced in more than mental pain when the _Pearl_ was struck by the _Defender_ ’s unflagging attacks.

“Our very own guardian destroying angel,” Jack murmured after one heavy hit. “I hope they’re getting paid well for this.”

“I hope they run out of shot,” Anamaria said more viciously. “I hope their cannons overheat and explode. Why can’t they leave us alone? We’re not hurtin’ them. And they’ve already managed to hurt us more than we’ve ever hurt anyone. Ever.”

“They do seem to have skipped the ‘love your enemy’ part and exceeded the ‘eye for an eye’ one by full fathom five,” Jack admitted. “Must be prophetic vengeance—punishin’ us for all the deeds we haven’t done yet.”

“Does that mean we’re sinnin’ on credit, from now on?”

Jack gave her a sultry look and said, in that voice of his that could raise the temperature in a fire-less room in the middle of a storm, “Give you any ideas, darlin’?”

The effect was spoiled by the needle running through her torn skin and muscle again.

“Damn it, Jack!” Anamaria cringed.

“I’ll take that as a comment on my needlework and remain hopeful about the sinning,” Jack said with determined humour. “‘Mizzenmast.’” He tied the knot. “Almost done with your little boat, love.”

* * * * *

Finally Jack inserted the needle for the last time. “‘Jolly Roger,’” he proclaimed in weary triumph.  Swiftly he drew the thread through, tugged the last small gap of flesh together, and tied off the stitch. “It’s over now. You can relax.” He patted her fist knotted in the coverlet, encouragingly.

Anamaria let out a long shivering sigh.

“Best get this off before your leg falls off,” Jack said, removing the bandage on her thigh.

As the strange ache of returning circulation throbbed in her leg, Anamaria lay there, eyes closed, consciously stilling her breathing, and explored the shape and boundaries and weight of the pain that remained now that the sudden intense shocks of it had ceased, coming to an accord with it.  Thus far, and no farther. Defining the space it would occupy in her life for the foreseeable future.  She could—she must—bear this. Then she began to pull the bits of herself from around the edges of that pain back into something coherent enough to function. When she had reached some measure of success, Anamaria opened her eyes.

Jack sat unmoving beside her, his shoulders curved in an exhausted arc as he rested his forehead in the crook of his arm on the mattress. His right arm was cradled against his chest as though it were acting as a splint again. Anamaria reached out to thread abused fingers in the damp locks of hair against his cheek.

“Mmmm.” She felt, more than heard, his sigh vibrate against her fingertips, and he nudged his face against her hand. The barest hint of a smile curved her lips. He was such an unabashed hedonist. But for once she could indulge herself, while Jack was far too tired to take advantage. And so she let herself enjoy the varied textures of smooth skin and fine beard in a brief caress, before withdrawing her hand.

The tremor of the _Pearl_ under another shot from the _Defender_ reminded them that this sense of calm was merely an illusion. Jack would have to drain the last dregs of his strength and return to his duties as captain, made doubly arduous by her absence. And she would be left to recover as best she could in frustrating inactivity.

“Guess I’m wanted on deck, lass,” he sighed. “Still got a Navy to outrun tonight.”

Watching Jack move usually made her want to stretch and purr like a cat, there was such relish for the swing and range of muscles, such graceful energy to him. But now, watching him stand made her ache.

As he scrubbed at the dried blood on his hands, he nodded at Duncan. “You can snuggle up to the drunken sot, there. Keep each other warm. I’ll send Peytoe in with lint and bandages to finish your leg.”

Anamaria had not looked at her injury yet. Not when it had happened. Not while everyone had been gathering supplies. Not while Jack had been cleaning and stitching it. Suddenly she wanted to get it over with while he was still here.

“Jack?” she stalled his departure. “I want to see what . . . what happened.”

“Of course.” He didn’t laugh at her, merely returned to her side and helped her sit up so that she could inspect his workmanship. “There you are, darlin’. Fifty-four of Sparrow’s finest. You won’t find a neater stitch outside of a London mantuamaker’s.”

Somehow, with all their conversation, Anamaria had almost expected to see swirling letters, tiny Latin phrases, and a black ship with flag flying embroidered into her leg. What she actually saw was a trail of precise, evenly-spaced, tiny black stitches spanning the long, ugly, irregular red line that closed what had been a gaping wound. The flesh around it was purple-black with bruises, bloodstained and distorted.

“Very nice,” she said attempting to be enthusiastic. The stitches were so much better than they could have been. She glanced at the somnolent Duncan. Much better.

“Something wrong?” Jack asked, although she’d said nothing negative.

“No. Of course not. Thank you so much, Jack.”

“You’ll have a whale of a scar, won’t you, love?” he responded understandingly.

“I suppose so,” Anamaria tried to laugh. She’d nearly died. Would have if this magnificent, brave ship had not somehow held on to her. She could very easily have lost the leg entirely. And she was worried about a scar? How stupid could she be? Stupid enough, apparently.

And so she found herself turning her face into Jack’s shoulder as the arm with which he was supporting her tightened comfortingly, and succeeding in not crying. She had that much self-respect at least.

“That is always going to be the most beautiful scar you have,” Jack mused against her hair, stroking sweat-dampened tendrils from her face with soothing fingertips. She could feel the strands catch on his calluses. “Every time I see it, I’ll remember the price you were willing to pay and what you won for us.”

Anamaria did not know whether she was equal to the task of not loving this man too much.

 “Besides,” he continued, and she could hear the smile in his voice. “You’ll look ever so dashing and dangerous with that mark on you. We’ll have to make a ballad about the fearsome pirate Anamaria, bane of the Royal Navy, and sing it in every tavern in the Caribbean.”

“And Africa?” she asked, laughing shakily and pulling away from him again.

“And Africa.” Jack smirked. He waved his left arm expansively. “The whole world!”

Without his arm bracing her, Anamaria began to fold back against the bed. Jack caught her again and lowered her less abruptly. Her eyes closed in the lassitude of extreme weakness. In the haze of rum and blood-loss and exhaustion that clouded her mind as her body gave up fighting, she was dimly aware of Jack drawing soggy blankets over her, and then his warm, ship-worn palms cupping her face and the scratch of his beard and the tapping of the little braids on her nose as he kissed her forehead.

She sneezed, and he laughed softly.

As though from several decks away, she heard him murmur, “It’s good to have you back, Anamaria.”

And then he was gone—back to charm power from the rioting winds and swiftest flight from a tall black ship.

* * * * *

TBC


	15. To Strive, to Seek, to Find, and Not to Yield

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The chase continues. The Navy pursues. Philosophy happens. Groves tells Sparrow stories. Naval snark ensues. This one is a tad different.

The sense of the utter futility of pursuing Jack Sparrow was becoming entirely too familiar to Commodore Norrington.  The tighter the noose around that pirate’s unwashed neck, the more spectacular was his slither out of it.  There had been no possible way for Sparrow to fly the net in which the Royal Navy had entrapped him, but there he was, aiming his wraith of a ship like an arrow at the horizon, a complete thumb of the nose at every law from the Decalogue to the precepts of Science, an irrational current flowing against the mighty river of logic, a garishly-coloured thread of chaos insinuating itself into the warp and weft of the decorous fabric of civilization.

It was fitting that there be no glorious sunset tonight, merely a dismal failing of the light and a gathering darkness of storm.  Far off in the gloom of rain and falling night two shadow ships flew headlong before the tempest in the deadly game of hunter and hunted.  The _Dauntless_ , falling farther and farther behind, would lose them by nightfall.  Nevertheless, Norrington would continue pursuit.  Sparrow would have to lay up for repairs sooner rather than later.  His ship was scarcely sea-worthy.  Even with her vaunted speed, she was not leaving the _Defender_ in her wake.  Eventually, Walton, with his perfectly sound, fleet brig, would force a second engagement.  But Walton’s crew would be far outnumbered by Sparrow’s should it come to boarding.  The _Dauntless_ would be able to reverse those odds if he could somehow track those two ships in these trackless seas. 

The ship was in Gillette’s capable hands.  He’d left his first lieutenant to set the fastest course between the current and wind, suspecting that Sparrow would be doing the same.  Then, perhaps by dawn, the _Dauntless_ might still be sharing the horizon with her sister brig and the crippled _Black Pearl_.

Since the need for any strategy or tactic other than pursuit had evaporated, the commodore had little to do. The heightened senses of battle still washed along his nerves and sinews but he had no task on which to expend that surging energy, so he paced the decks of his ship with sharp, staccato steps.  Finally his un-aimed feet led him to the surgery.  He’d just check with Samuels.  See how the boy was faring. What had he said his name was? Something simple. Pip? No, Jip. That was it. 

He met the doctor coming out the door looking grim, but since Gilbert Samuels always looked grim, Norrington was not able to read anything into his expression. 

“Were you able to set the bone, Gil?” he asked.

The answer did not really surprise him.  He’d seen the splintered ruin of the boy’s leg.  “Too much damage, James,” Samuels said, shaking his dark, silver-shot head. “Too many fragments. If he heals, he will be a cripple.”

The intensity of the regret Norrington felt surprised him.  “That is a great pity,” he said softly. “He was a likely lad.”

“A very great pity.” Samuels’ voice had the gruffness in it that Norrington had come to know meant he was fighting off some non-professional emotion.

“How is he?”

“Not well, I’m afraid,” the doctor answered. “There are already signs of inflammation.  I’d bleed him a little from above the wound, but truth to tell, he’s already lost a great deal of blood, so there can be no real efficacy in such a treatment and possibly much harm.”

“Will you be able to save the leg?” the commodore asked.

“Not likely,” Samuels said shortly.  “But he’s young and healthy.  He’s got a chance. So I’ll wait until tomorrow to decide.  If the inflammation looks like it may be terminated either by dispersion or suppuration, I won’t amputate.  However, if gangrene has started, I won’t have any choice if we are to save his life.”

Norrington had thought he might go in to see the boy, speak to him perhaps, but he found he didn’t have the heart to do so.  His stomach felt as though a great weight had settled in it. Parting company with the doctor, he headed back for the weather decks of his ship, unwilling to betake his shivering self to the shelter of his cold, dark cabin, needing activity for the restlessness gnawing at him.

As he stood again by the break in the poop deck, unhappily still freed of immediate responsibilities, he felt, rather than saw, Lieutenant Groves come up behind him.  His second lieutenant always carried his own personal fair day about with him, as though the rain did not dare be mournful in his vicinity but must perforce transmute into liquid sunlight, and all winds must alter from blustery to bracing.  Everyone else on this entire ship was tired and discouraged and suitably foul-tempered enough to match their commodore, but Groves’ eternal optimism was for once more balm for the soul than the sand on raw flesh it sometimes seemed. 

Norrington was off duty and in no need of a lieutenant. But he was most particularly in need of a friend.  A level head would be nice as well, but he was so very low himself that interaction with Groves’ tendency to flight might balance the two of them out nicely.

“Theodore.” Norrington turned, welcoming, to the slender dark man and saw him relax as the informality of their encounter was established.

Groves’ white smile lit his thin face as he settled himself by the rail. “James,” he responded. “You look like you’ve just lost your best friend.”

“Then my face must certainly be lying, for I am quite sure that I have just found at least one of them,” the commodore said affectionately.  He hadn’t thought it was possible, but Groves’ smile brightened further.  “However,” Norrington turned to contemplate the leaden seas, beaten to a froth by the _Dauntless’_ passage, “I seem to have lost my best enemy, when it should have been impossible to do so, and that has, shall we say, discomposed me for the nonce.”

When Groves did not respond, the commodore looked back at him inquiringly.  The lieutenant shrugged. “What would you have me say, James? You know my feelings on the subject, and I would not cause you further unpleasantness.”

Norrington quirked a wry smile at this uncharacteristic reticence. He must really look like hell.  “Go ahead, Theodore.  Tell me what a matchless pirate Jack Sparrow is. Perhaps that will make me feel less like a fool for allowing him to escape—again.”

“I do not think we allowed him to escape, this time.” Groves’ eyes were introspective, as though seeing again that incredible moment when that shattered ship had plunged ahead of the _Dauntless_ and driven her way past the _Defender_.  “I don’t think any force, human or inhuman could have held him.”

“I cannot accept that.” Norrington shook his head in denial.  “I have a duty to eliminate all pirate threat in the Caribbean, among which brood of vipers Sparrow is foremost. And I will do it.”

Groves frowned at him quizzically. “Sometimes I do not think we are talking about the same man, James Norrington.”

“And sometimes I do not think we are talking about the same crime, Theodore Groves,” Norrington shot back. “These are pirates. You have seen what they do.  The smoking devastation of port towns, the bodies in the streets, the victims of unspeakable cruelties, the faces of those who have lost family or their livelihoods or their possessions.  The look in their eyes . . .” A shiver like the shift in the wind on the leech of a sail caught him for a moment in memory. “That . . . that is what I cannot endure. When I was brought to this place by the vicissitudes of the Admiralty, and for the first time found myself dealing with the aftermath of a pirate attack, I swore that I would eliminate this trade in human suffering.”

There were few things that moved the commodore to speak with passion, but this was one of them.  Earnestly, Groves said, “And you have done so much towards accomplishing that goal. I share it, you know.  That is why I am here, too.”

“I know, Theo,” Norrington sighed. “That is why I put up with your perverse fondness for pirates. Because I recognize, at heart, you, also, want the suffering to end.”

The two officers stood silently, moving instinctively with the ship as she rushed up one side of a wave and then tipped crazily down another, staring out across the endless mountains and valleys of the sea, each pursuing the course of his own thoughts.

Groves finally broke the silence. “Do you not wonder if perhaps, today, we have caused more suffering than we have halted?” His voice was pensive,

“I must uphold the law,” Norrington insisted. “Sparrow and his ilk are pirates, thieves, lawless men.  They have to be held accountable to the law.  They must not be allowed to prey on innocents.”

“And who are these innocents we have just avenged?” Groves asked, a flicker of impatience showing. “The passengers of the _Rosalind_ for instance?”

“Sparrow plundered that ship when she was storm-damaged and unable to flee.  Then he kidnapped those people and held them for ransom,” Norrington said decidedly.

“And two days later their ship went down.”

“That is certainly neither to his credit nor to his blame.”

“But he knew it would happen,” Groves insisted.  “Captain McBride told me so. Sparrow had intentions of taking only one hostage—Mrs. Fitzbrace-Pennythump who’d had the bright idea to insult him and boast of her illustrious connections and wealth.  Have you met that old battleaxe, James?”

“Far too frequently.” Norrington’s smile twisted wryly.

“I swear, I’d have dumped her over the side and said to hell with the ransom!” the gentle Groves snapped vehemently. “Anyway, he was all set to leave with his plunder and that harridan when his quartermaster called him down into the bilges to inspect some structural aspect of her keel.  When they returned, Sparrow had changed his mind.  Said he was taking the whole lot of passengers for whatever ransom he could wring out of their relations. Offered to take the crew as well.  Told McBride there was a storm due in two days that would send the _Rosalind_ to the bottom.  McBride was furious with him—three of the hostages were his wife and children—and refused to abandon his ship.  So Sparrow left him two of the _Pearl_ ’s boats (the _Rosalind_ ’s having already been lost in the previous storm), which he expected to have returned along with the ransom for McBride’s family, and hightailed it for Port Royal, entirely missing the storm that took down the _Rosalind_. You remember their arrival.”

“Yes, that did cause quite a stir.” Norrington spoke reminiscently. “It took some careful handling to prevent anyone opening fire on that ship while there were civilians aboard.”

“So after all the ransoms were sorted out, with the _Black Pearl_ hovering like some great vulture in the harbour and making everybody nervous, Sparrow was off,” Groves continued. “Even delivered two little old missionaries right to their home port. Said it was to collect the ransom, but would you have done that for three dozen chickens?”

“Chickens,” Norrington said flatly. That had the vintage Sparrow ring to it.

“Yes,” Groves laughed delightedly. “Thirty-six of them.  And a promise to pray for the souls of his crew. It was one of those really poor missions, the kind that give away money rather than collect it.”

“Are there such things?” Norrington asked incredulously. Then he waved his hand in an erasing motion. “Forget I said that,” he amended hastily. “I suppose the chickens would explain the complaints of the _Allendale_?”

“They would.”

“Only Sparrow would consider chickens ideal members of a boarding party,” the commodore groaned in exasperation.

Groves grinned. “You do realize that if we actually succeed in capturing and hanging that pirate, half the entertainment that brightens our careers here in these godforsaken colonies is going to be gone?”

“I’ll manage to live with that,” Norrington said repressively. “I suppose he made up for his charity to the missionaries, if you can call it that, by soaking old Fitzbrace-Pennythump.  I’m sure it broke that skinflint’s hard little, pea-sized, penny-pinching heart to part with a single groat to get that clapperclawing shrew back into his possession.”

“Rubies,” Groves stated succinctly.

“What?”

“Sparrow asked for a ruby necklace.  Said he’d promised Elizabeth Swann that he would prevent Mrs. FitzP from ever wearing rubies with puce again if he had the chance. Considered taking them off her hands another act of charity.” The laughter in his lieutenant’s voice bubbled beneath the surface. “Old Fitz wasn’t too upset about losing them.  They belonged to her family to begin with, and he didn’t like them with puce either.”

“How do you know so much about this?” Norrington asked, curiousity aroused. He’d been generally aware of the ransom negotiations, but had paid no attention to the niggling details. The paperwork had been fierce enough as it was.

“I’ve talked with Mr. FitzP on a number of occasions,” Groves shrugged. “He’s not such a bad sort if you discount that leg-shackle he’s cursed with, and the fact that he still owns the first copper he ever earned. But it wasn’t just her he wanted back.  Have you ever met the scion of the house of Fitzbrace-Pennythump?”

“Once, to my sorrow.” Norrington rolled his eyes.

“He was a hopeless little pill, spoilt entirely rotten, wasn’t he?” Groves smirked.

“That young limb of Satan?” Norrington snapped. “I would have drowned him like a pup if he’d been mine!”

“Such violence, James!  I’m shocked.” Groves looked at him with wide-eyed amazement, spoiled only by the quivering of his dimples. “What did he do? Steal your wig?”

Commodore Norrington glared repressively at his chortling lieutenant.

“Ha! He did!” Groves whooped in triumph. “James, my lad, you do know that vanity is a sin?”

“Dignity is not!” Even Norrington had to admit that sounded insufferably stuffy.

“And it’s a good thing James, or you would indeed be going to hell.” Groves laughed.

“Theodore, you do realize your entire career, nay, your entire life is in my hands, do you not?” Norrington tried to sound severe.

“But I have it on the highest authority that you are a good man, James.” Groves spoke with blithe insouciance. “So I feel free of the fear of petty vengeance.”

”Leaving aside, for the moment, the fascinating topic of my venial character traits,” Norrington said haughtily, ignoring Groves snort. “I believe you were about to make some observation concerning the Fitzbrace-Pennythumps’ young and blighted olive branch.”

“The fact is, the boy was one of the passengers on the _Rosalind_. So he spent two weeks being forced to live, and what’s more work, like a pirate.” Groves explained with relish. “Apparently Sparrow put the fear of God into the lad. The old gentleman is tickled pink—says it was the making of his grandson—worth that blasted ruby necklace, in fact. The kid is serving on one of his grandfather’s ships now.  Of course, Mrs. FitzP has heart palpitations and nervous spasms every time she thinks of it, and Mr. FitzP has dyspepsia every time she thinks of it, too, for she will not shut up about it—she is sure he is acquiring all manner of vices and low tastes and diseases and vermin.”

“Well, good!” Norrington said fervently. “Every boy needs a few of those.”

“I’ve met him once since his kidnapping.  He’s turned out to be a likely lad—still a Fitzbrace-Pennythump, of course, but not unbearably so, now.”

“All right. I concede.” Norrington threw up his hands in surrender and let them fall with a wet slap to the ship’s rail. “Sparrow exhibited a virtue beyond that which I possess in that he did not immediately toss that insufferable whelp to the sharks. Are you satisfied?”

To his surprise, Groves did not answer him immediately, and when he did, his voice was sober. “I don’t know, James. Are you?”

So, the discussion had turned the full circle of the compass and they were back to Groves’ original question. Had the crimes Sparrow committed merited him the punishment Norrington had sought to deal him this day?  Was the only adequate recompense blood and breath here on the water or later on the scaffold? According to the law, the answer was: absolutely.

Norrington watched the rain beading on his cold hands, forming rivulets, and running down onto the rail as he answered. “All humour aside and granting that Sparrow has committed one or two good deeds in his lifetime of wickedness and that he possesses a talent for the absurd that borders on genius, there are other things I cannot dismiss so easily.”

“Such as?” Groves challenged.

“What about the captain of the _Madrigal_?” Norrington replied gravely. “Shot down in cold blood after his ship had surrendered to the _Black Pearl._ ”

“By his own men, James,” the lieutenant insisted in frustration. “You know that.  And they’d wanted to tear him limb from limb, but Sparrow wouldn’t allow it.  Insisted they make it clean.”

“A clean mutiny is nevertheless a mutiny. You’d think Sparrow, of all men, would be particularly clear on that.” Norrington was adamant.

“You were aware that Buxton was a viciously brutal captain, were you not?” Groves pointed out, tracing patterns in the rain on the rail and not looking at the commodore.

“Yes, I’d heard rumours,” Norrington admitted.

“Three men, already that year, had died under the lash on that vessel.”

“A very great shame that some captains abuse their power so, but discipline . . .”

Groves cut him off. “Discipline can go hang, James!  Power does not give a man the right to commit murder in the name of discipline.”

Norrington met the familiar fire in his second lieutenant’s eyes.  The old arguments were a tradition between the two of them, falling into lines worn and flexible with long use, like aged parchment. This, he knew, was the reason Groves was in the service—this passionate commitment to justice. Unfortunately, justice was an elusive creature, as likely to evade the Navy as anyone else, and there had always been something quixotic about Theodore—a secret wish to tilt at windmills, a dangerous desire to plot his own course. But if a man really wished to change the world, he would batter his heart bloody against stone unless he could work within the system.

“Then he should have been brought to trial and sentenced with due legal process,” Norrington insisted.

“You know as well as I, that if his officers would not testify against him, nothing the men before the mast could have said would have held water before a court.  This law we have dedicated our lives to enforcing has almost as avaricious an attraction to gold as the pirates we hang.”  The bitter disillusion in Groves’ voice was painful.

That was the problem with ideals. It was left to men, caught up in their own personal webs of lusts and manipulations and fears, to put those ideals into practice.  Norrington was too tired and cold and seething with undischarged battle nerves to imagine a solution to that problem.  No system was perfect. But this one was better than many others and within it the facts stood incontrovertible. An action that was a crime remained a crime regardless.

“The man who pulled the trigger is now a member of Sparrow’s crew,” Norrington said firmly. That was a fact. One more to add to the list of crimes requiring death that trailed after the _Black Pearl_.

Of course facts were never just facts for Theodore. “What did you expect?” he exclaimed. “That he would return to his loving civilization to be hanged for mutiny and murder?”

“Of which he _is_ guilty,” Norrington insisted. Even Theodore could not controvert that fact.

Nor did he attempt to. “I suppose, technically, he is.”

“Yes,” the commodore said with some small satisfaction.

 “The law is a funny creature, isn’t it?” Groves mused after a pause. “Men conceive it, but somehow it goes on to become greater than men.  In a world of such terrible complexity and mutability, law attempts to resist nuance and change.  If all we are is the law, James, do we become something less than human?  Become our own creation rather than its creators?”

“Surely you, of all people, are not advocating anarchy?” Norrington said, not believing any such thing, but seeking to push the issue.

“Of course not,” the lieutenant responded, slicking the rain away from his face with both hands. “We need laws to protect us from our own wickedness. But should not a man wield the law as he does a sword—with skill and judgment and restraint, knowing when to strike home but also knowing when to give quarter—rather than be wielded by it?”

“I know there is much in what you say, Theo,” the commodore admitted. “But at what point in our attempt to bring good judgment to bear on the execution of the law do we make it vulnerable to bad judgment?  At what point do we remove its steel and turn it into a wooden sword at which criminals may laugh with impunity?”

“There is nothing easy about what we do, if we are doing more than simply obeying orders, is there?” Groves reflected soberly.

“No, there is not.”

Silence descended again.  The wind moaned in the _Dauntless’_ s rigging, her storm canvas strained and her hull groaned against the force of the sea.  Rain and salt spray stung their faces as the shadows of oncoming night threw more and more of the world into obscurity.

When Groves spoke again, the sound of his voice startled the commodore. “Speaking of nothing easy, how is our resident pirate?”

Hard truth indeed. “Not well,” Norrington sighed. “Samuels thinks he may have to amputate.  He’ll know by tomorrow.”

“Then I leave you with this observation, James,” said Groves quietly.  “There is not in the Caribbean this night, nor has there ever been to my knowledge, a child who is in danger of losing a leg because of some act of Jack Sparrow’s.”

“That is not a thought that is likely to lift my spirits, Theodore.”

Lieutenant Groves turned to face his commanding officer, and Norrington had never seen his normally cheerful countenance so bleak.  “I have decided that men who have spent a day as we have done this one deserve whatever discomforts our consciences choose to send us. In fact we should embrace them.  Otherwise we are in danger of becoming monsters worse than those we fight.”

* * * * *

TBC


	16. A Kind of Alacrity in Sinking

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The chase continues. The Navy pursues. The Black Pearl is falling apart. Jack has to decide what to do.

As the door to his cabin closed behind him, Jack let out his breath in a ragged sigh and leaned against the bulkhead, head tilted back against the dark timbers, eyes dropping shut without his volition.  He was so bloody tired.  How long had it been since he’d last rested? There’d been that long run before the storm the night before, then the ship had needed to be readied to ride it out.  He’d been about to turn in for the morning when Gibbs had shown up with that fatal bit of news . . . and it had been one damned thing after another ever since then until now it was coming on to nightfall.  Too bloody long, however long it had been.

He’d had less sleep before, had indeed sailed ships for days at a time, catching only catnaps on deck, through storms that made this one look like a pretentious breeze.  But those had been contests with the sea, a familiar adversary whose salt ran in his veins and whose rhythms pulsed in his heart.  The sea brought her own peace with her, a sense in the midst of the highest hurricane that this was home, this was bred in his bones, this was where he belonged.  And always before, he’d had the assurance that, however long it took, on the other side was rest and revival when he reached safe anchorage.  Those times, he had not had the British Navy wearing away his soul in battle, then battering it to pulp in ceaseless, numbing pursuit.  Those times, he had not lost friends and crewmembers nor seen others so terribly wounded. Those times, distant drums had not been throbbing in the back of his skull from that crack on the head he’d taken, nor had every breath burned against his protesting ribs until he considered the benefits of not breathing at all.

Under it all, like flame-hot steel against flesh, was the damage done to his _Pearl._ He could feel her, pressing against his back, surging in his pulse—so familiar, so beloved.  And yet the wrongness of her jangled along his nerves like the dissonance of a badly-tuned lyre.  The punishment she was taking drained him as though each shot that scourged her trembling hull opened another vein in his heart through which his spirit was gradually hemorrhaging away to wash from her decks with the blood of his crew.  He could feel his ship growing heavier with the sea, sinking into the storm, losing ground ever so slowly.

He wanted to promise her that soon she could rest—that they would find some way to a safe harbour where he could heal her hurts, restore her wings, make her once more the most daringly beautiful of all joinings of wood and sail. But he did not know how he could keep such a vow. Like cold fear, their relentless pursuer would follow and find her wherever she fled. That was inescapable truth—hard as a harlot’s smile and bitter as unshed tears.

Turning to her, he rested his cheek against her bulkhead as on the breast of a lover. His hand traced the grain, soothing the dark wood, whether seeking reassurance or to reassure, he could not have said. 

“Just hold for me a little longer, love.” He whispered the words so close to her that she breathed them back against his face, words that might almost have been a prayer.

* * * * *

Peytoe found him there soon after, nearly asleep, dark head bowed against the bulkhead, right arm clutching his coat to his chest as though to ease the burden on his ribs.

“Captain? Are ye all right?” the cook-now-surgeon asked worriedly.

Jack started back to full consciousness, assuming, with effort, the mantel of his office again.  This was no time for the captain to fall apart, clutching at his ship like a bloody infant at its mammy’s teat.  Turning to face Peytoe, he forced his face to fall into the familiar mask of unconcern with just the right dash of determination and a sprinkle of bracing humour. “I’m fine, Peytoe. Right as rain. Wet as it too, as a matter of fact. Just catching a wink or two. Bit tired is all.  Kind of you to ask.”

Peytoe, having become fairly well-acquainted with his captain’s vagaries through having had to deal with various Sparrowish disturbances in a medical capacity ever since Jack had signed him on to the ship based on his unbroken record of never poisoning anyone with his grub—well at least not unto death—was not deceived.  On the other hand, he also knew there wasn’t much he could do about Captain Sparrow when he took it into his thick skull to pretend to be indestructible. The most he could achieve was an efficient sweeping up of the pieces when the universe objected to that assumption and swatted the man back down to reality.  Looked like the universe was busily going about that process at that very moment. So the cook merely shrugged, nodded at the captain’s un-donned coat, and offered, “Would ye like a hand wi’ that?”

Jack decided he would, but didn’t Peytoe have other more pressing duties? “Why ain’t you in the wardroom sawin’ off legs or somethin’?” he asked.

 “Ain’t no more arteries shootin’ blood at the ceilin’,” Peytoe explained, “so I come lookin’ fer some spare hands t’ help wi’ the amputatin’. I can give ye a minute.”

In response the captain held out his coat to the man. This would have been more fun with Anamaria, Jack thought regretfully.  Hurt just as much either way, but with his first mate, he could make rude suggestions just for the pleasure of seeing those hot fires strike up in her dark eyes. Admittedly, those were the sparks of wrath, but they were damn fine to watch anyway, and he could always pretend otherwise.  Gave his mind something to work over while he was not so very comfortable.  But Anamaria was a quenched candle at the moment. Only had little fizzes left in her there at the end.  Hardly sporting to tease her, that was. And playing the dresser was completely beyond her abilities for now. So he would endure Peytoe.

“Now sir,” Peytoe said firmly, in the tone of a man who knows his onions and will not accept any backtalk from a mere captain, “Ye jes’ do what I says and leave everythin’ t’ me.”

Since the cook was a far larger man than his captain, Jack figured he wasn’t going to be given much choice. 

Peytoe held up the jacket behind Captain Sparrow and began working the right sleeve on first. “Don’ ye take up wrigglin’ nor shruggin’ nor none o’ that monkeyshinin’, an then like as not ye won’ feel hardly anythin’.”

Jack wasn’t too sanguine about that possibility, but he complied, staying as relaxed and boneless as possible.  “Cook, surgeon—valet. You’re a man of many talents, Peytoe,” he said.

“Used t’ do this for me da,” Peytoe reminisced. “Though he were usually jes’ too drunk, not banged up like you.”

Jack considered, wistfully, the concept of being too drunk.

“Then I run away t’ sea,” Peytoe continued, plunking Jack’s left hand efficiently into the second sleeve. “Allus wondered what happened t’ th’ ole gent.”

And speaking of drunks, Jack had his jug-bitten first mate to remember here. “Peytoe, I need you t’ bandage Anamaria’s leg when you’ve got a moment.  She’s all stitched up, but I didn’t take the time t’ finish the job.”

 “’M glad it was you, an’ not me!” Peytoe said with fervour, beginning to draw the coat up Jack’s arms. “I likes me ballocks jes’ how they is.”

Jack eyed his cook warily out of the corner of his eye. “Mr. Peytoe, are you suggestin’ . . .?”

“No, no, nowt o’ the sort,” Peytoe said hurriedly. “Merely sayin’ that ye’re the only man as can lay a hand on the lass an’ not find hisself missin’ some bits.”

“Tearlach managed t’ carry her without any . . . removal of parts, din’t he?” Jack said, curious about this perception of his first mate.  The coat’s progress was moving apace with surprisingly bearable amounts of discomfort. Peytoe was working slowly, making sure the damp fabric of Jack’s shirt was not bunching up in the equally damp coat sleeves, being actually quite gentle.

“Aye, but she were dead then,” the cook said sagely from over Jack’s shoulder. “She might be safe, if’n she’s dead.”

It seemed clear that Anamaria would be joining the _Black Pearl_ ’s legends and folklore as the woman who came back from the dead, Jack decided, amused—and grateful for the amusement. 

“You should be safe now,” Jack reassured the man. “She’s three sheets t’ the wind and half seas under.”

Peytoe looked relieved.

The coat settled over Jack’s shoulders finally, and some measure of warmth returned.  Really, Peytoe was a gem of a doctor. Hadn’t been half bad at distracting his captain.  Not Anamaria by any stretch, but not bad. Might not be one of those fancy sorts with the educations, but he could make a man laugh in the direst circumstances, and that was far better, in Jack’s opinion, than the ability to cup a man on every vein of his body or make thirty-five different sorts of blisters.  Besides, Jack knew for a fact that Peytoe could take off a limb and tie the major blood vessels in a nearly naval-like three minutes. Just took practice, not education. Fortunately, he’d gotten most of his practice on ships other than the _Pearl—_ up until now. The amusement drowned.

As Peytoe smoothed and straightened his handiwork, Jack hauled line on himself and asked the question he did not want answered. “Well, Peytoe, what’s the devil’s arithmetic for this day?”

Satisfied that his captain was now thoroughly re-attired, Peytoe began situating Jack’s arm in Anamaria’s sling. Soberly, he answered, “Nineteen dead, sir.  Another fourteen sure t’ join ‘em. Twenty-eight wounded and disabled, an’ I lost count o’ the men I sent back up top wi’ only minor pieces shot off ‘em or holes in their hides.”

He’d known it was bad. Such a long time before they’d escaped. So much blood on his decks. But, “That’s a third of the crew down, one way or t’other!” he realized, horror twisting double-edged blades in his gut. Jack tried to tell himself that it was better than he’d hoped—that when he’d first put the _Pearl_ at that bar, he’d expected to lose them all. But it didn’t help. Somehow—he didn’t rightly know how—he should have been able to save them. He should have done _something_ to save them all. They had placed their lives in his hands, and he had failed them.  The weight of that failure tightened on his chest, an agony sharper than any merely broken bone.

A stumble of hurried footsteps sounded and two men came rushing towards the wardroom carrying a third man, groans wrenching from him that could stop the heart, unrecognizable in the welter of his blood.

“That’ll either be number fifteen or number twenty-nine,” Peytoe said, and rushed after his new charge.  “Send me some hands t’ help wi’ the butcherin’!” he tossed back to Jack before he disappeared.

Captain Sparrow, pivoted sharply and bolted for the open decks. He had to come up with a new plan, and he had to come up with one now, because running away was damn well not working. 

* * * * *

The last of the grim daylight was being swallowed by night, cloaking the rain-blurred lines of the _Black Pearl_ in further shadow, when Jack appeared again.  Gibbs happened to be looking in the right direction to see the captain come boiling out on deck as though pursued by all the demons of hell, which fortuitous circumstance allowed him to brace himself for the onslaught of highly over-tuned Jack Sparrow that fetched up a hand span from his nose.

“Status!” Jack barked, reminding his quartermaster forcibly of several naval officers he’d known in the never-to-be-sufficiently-forgotten past.  Except no officer had ever threatened to put out his eye by sheer proximity of wildly-whipping, dangerously-adorned hair. Of course neither would a naval officer have been handing him back his flask—naturally it was empty. Freestanding rum did not last long around Jack.

Gibbs backed up a couple of steps, but he needn’t have bothered. The captain pursued him, oblivious to the threat he posed.

Resigned, Gibbs attempted to satisfy Jack’s demand while strategically evading hair-borne missiles. The quicker the captain had his answers, the faster he’d depart for parts unoccupied by Gibbs’ head.  Not that Jack was going to be liking those answers.  Might as well start with the worst.

“She’s in rough shape, I have t’ tell you,” he admitted.  “We can’t outrun that brig for much longer.  The ship can’t handle much more of this.  Not without we lay up for a refit in a right hurry.”

“Aye,” said the captain softening a little in sorrow as he glanced around at his blasted and battered ship. “She’s a bonnie grand lady, but we’ve abused her sore.”

Relieved that Jack was standing down from his zealous attempt to puncture or otherwise perforate his quartermaster, Gibbs continued, “We’re still takin’ on more water, and one of the main pumps took a hit from a loose timber and snapped right off at the deck.  Broke Karanjeet’s leg, too,” he added. Although at this point, men were easier to replace than machinery.

“Damnation!” Jack swore, rather mildly Gibbs felt, considering the situation. “How long till she’s repaired?”

There was a stretch of silence. Gibbs cleared his throat. “She’s not being repaired.”

“What?” Jack’s voice was sharp, bordering on threatening. “And may I ask why? Gibbs, you know we need that pump.”

“Hawkins told me there was nothing he could do,” Gibbs admitted, not liking the look that response produced in the captain’s eyes.

“Send for Hawkins.” That tone did not bode well for their ship’s chief artificer.

“He can’t tell you anythin’ I haven’t,” Gibbs objected. “The man’s that busy . . .”

“Don’t need him t’ tell _me_ anythin’,” Jack said mulishly. “Need t’ tell _him_ somethin’.  But you’re right. We’ll go to him. Where is he?”

“Another of the pumps is choked. He’s down settin’ it t’ rights.” Gibbs felt a twinge of guilt, sending poor Hawkins to the lions like that, but it wasn’t like the lion wasn’t going to track him down eventually. And when Captain Sparrow was all primed and loaded and ready to fire, a man couldn’t help wanting to misdirect the barrel away from himself.

Grateful for any time spent out of the rain that was chilling him to the bone, he followed the seething charge of Sparrow down to the well, extending from the lower deck to the bottom of the hull in the middle of the ship’s hold, that normally protected the boxes and valves of the pumps from being choked by shifting ballast or other obstructions. However, the well had been damaged in the firefight, and inevitably, one of the pumps was in need of help.  There was water high up in it by now, Gibbs noted with a shudder.  A few more minutes and that valve would have been under.

Jack shouted down the well, “Hawkins!”

A weary dark face looked up, only visible by the red-shot whites of his eyes. Its owner was already half submerged. “Aye, Captain?”

“Soon as you’ve got this pump workin’, get a team together and repair that broken pump,” Jack commanded, waving his hand in its topside direction with his sublime indifference to hard facts and even harder reality.

“But sir,” the astonished man stammered, “we can’t . . . we don’t have the parts . . . the forge is not . . . the fire is out and . . . fix it, sir? That’s impossible!”

Gibbs winced. He had a pretty good idea how that was going to go over.

“Did I ask you what you can’t do?” The captain’s voice lowered, menace prowling about its edges. “I seem to recall tellin’ you what you _will_ do. That was not a request. That was an order. I don’t care if you have to fix that pump with somebody’s bones! I don’t care if you have to fix it with _yours_! You _will_ fix it! Do you understand me?”

“Aye, sir!” The man gulped nervously. “Whatever you say, sir.”

Nothing like being told by your captain that your arse was on the line, and you didn’t stand a chance, Gibbs thought sympathetically.  It was unlike the captain to be so bloody unreasonable.  “Jack,” he remonstrated, as they scrambled back towards the weather decks. “Ye can’t ask more of the men than is possible.”

“That’s ‘Captain Jack’ to you, mate,” Jack snapped over his shoulder, still in high dudgeon. “And for your information, there is nothing possible or impossible but thinking makes it so.  They’ll come up with something now. You see if they don’t.”

Gibbs shrugged expressively. There was no dealing with Jack when he got this way.  Best let it run its course. “As you say, Captain.”

Slightly mollified, Jack deigned to offer a small explanation, also a rare occurrence. “Gibbs, if he’s right and it _is_ impossible, the _Pearl_ is scuppered. So you’d better pray _I’m_ right.”

As they gained the quarterdeck again, Gibbs was puffing and out of breath, but the captain was sweeping along with that inhuman blast of energy desperate situations always seemed to breed in him. He paused briefly to delegate a couple of the lads to assist the cook, before swirling onward. Unable to keep still, Captain Sparrow forced his quartermaster to carom about the deck chasing after him in order to finish his report.

“And how is the crew?” Jack asked, his face grim as he paused by the windward shrouds, laying a hand on the heavy cable. “We’ve lost some good men, and more are hurtin’. Does their courage hold?”

“Aye, sir. They’re all good lads.  Fighters, every last one.” Gibbs was glad to have at least one positive thing to say. It was certainly the only one. “But there’s only so far you can push a man before his body betrays him.”

Jack nodded shortly and resumed his perambulations. At the break in the poop, he turned back to Gibbs. “We’ve been driving hard for the better parts of two days now.”

“Harder, sir,” Gibbs said. “The men are all but done in. They’ve scarce had an hour t’ rest in the last twenty.  First we had t’ beat that storm in.  And now we’re pumpin’ non-stop, workin’ her sails, repairin’ the damage, dodgin’ that cursed brig’s fire. And ain’t none of ‘em had a bit o’ sup nor a draught t’ drink since this whole bloody business began.”

“And that’s goin’ to continue bein’ a problem, innit,” said the captain reflectively, lighting out for the binnacle.

 “You’re on the money there, Cap’n,” Gibbs agreed, limping rapidly behind him.  Too bad the racket of even this reduced storm made him have to stay close to Jack’s ear.  “The seas keep puttin’ the galley fire out, but that don’t matter because the stove’s been damaged an’ we’ll be waitin’ on the forge before we get any hot food, but that don’t matter because the stores are full o’ salt water or washed away.” He paused to catch his breath.

Jack opened his mouth as though to say something, then closed it and simply waved Gibbs to carry on.

“Which brings up the problem of food. Or more to the point—lack of it.  We’re pretty much down t’ a few barrels o’ fruit an’ the salt horse.  But it takes fresh water t’ boil the salt out o’ that, an’ there’s the rub.  Because we’re runnin’ real low on fresh water. Every time we try t’ collect rain, a bloody great sea swamps the decks and it’s salt again.”

A shot from the _Defender_ screamed into the spars and rigging above them and the two of them threw themselves to the decks, arms sheltering their heads. When the rain of debris had settled, Gibbs found himself in possession of several new bruises that were immediately lost in the complaints being lodged by all his previous bruises.  

He crawled to Jack’s side where the captain hadn’t moved from his huddle on the deck. “Ye all right, Captain? Jack?” Gibbs asked worriedly, laying a hand on Jack’s arm.

“’M fine,” came the muffled voice from under the heap of wet dark hair.  “Just havin’ an argument wi’ me ribs.  Don’ worry. ‘M winnin’. Jus’ . . . gi’ me a minute.”

Even though Gibbs thought he now had a pretty good idea how he was going to feel if he lived to be a hundred, and he was having his own argument with his knees, he made it to his feet, and clung to the binnacle for support.  It took Jack a little longer to start slowly unfolding, and even then, he had to ask Gibbs’ help to make it to his feet.  When a heavy cough shook his slender frame, Gibbs found himself supporting most of the captain’s weight.

As soon as he could stand on his own again, Jack spat into his hand and peered at the results. “No blood,” he said cheerfully, but Gibbs could hear the shiver in his voice. “I guess it’s not all bad, eh?” He wiped his palm on the leg of his grimy breeches.

Not all bad. At least the captain hadn’t lost a lung. Yet.  “Jack,” Gibbs urged. “Ye can’t keep drivin’ yourself and this ship and these men.  You’ll kill yourself!”

“Seems like someone is already on that,” Jack commented with a tilt of his head aft in the direction of the _Defender_. 

“Then don’t do their work for them, Jack,” Gibbs begged. “We have t’ get this ship out of here. The men need food and water and rest. And we ain’t goin’ t’ be able t’ give it t’ them until we lose that brig.”

 “No.” Jack’s flat monosyllable did not enlighten Gibbs.

“No what?” he asked in exasperation.

“We’re not goin’ to lose that brig, Mr. Gibbs,” Jack replied evenly.

“That’s what I’m afraid of,” Gibbs grumbled. “But won’t we be able t’ shake her in the night, sir?”

Captain Sparrow shook his head slowly.  “Only if the _Defender_ ’s captain is a damn sight duller than I’ve yet seen any sign of him bein’. Like as not he’ll hold fire and hug us close enough to hear our pumps.  It’ll give us a breather from all the poundin’ we’ve been takin’, but we’ll not lose her.”

“No chance of a decoy, I suppose.”

“What have we left to use as a decoy? We’ve scavenged her very bulkheads by now to block leaks and she’s still as full of holes as a politician’s integrity.  She’s goin’ down, Gibbs. Slowly, but I can feel it.” Jack was pacing like a man being stung by ants, unable to escape. His eyes were wide and ferocious. His hands half-formed and then rejected ideas, clenching and unclenching.

Gibbs reflected that the captain had always reacted as though the harm done to his ship were engraved on his own hide, as though they were connected by some frightening voodoo curse that neither of them could escape or ignore. And now that the ship was dying, could her captain even continue to function?

“I don’t dare order the pumps to cease long enough for us to give that brig the slip.”  Jack’s voice twisted with frustration.  He scowled at the sky. “And this storm is goin’ t’ turn into a real monster come about three o’ the clock in the morning. We’ll be hard pressed to keep her afloat as it is.”

“If it does,” said Gibbs, having sailed long enough with Jack Sparrow to accept that if Jack said the weather would do something, it did, “won’t we be able t’ sneak past them in all that noise?”

Jack was already shaking his head. Apparently he’d already considered that. “Won’t last long enough. The _Pearl_ will be too slow by then.  We’ll still be on the same horizon by the time the storm’s blown itself out sometime before dawn.  If she’ll hold together, we might gain some distance, but with the weather calmin’ down, we’ll have lost the advantage of carryin’ near equal the canvas of the _Defender._ She’ll be free to crack on her full cloud while we’ve got no sails left to add.   She’ll catch us soon after sunrise.”

“So what you’re sayin’ is that we’re finished, or we will be tomorrow mornin’,” Gibbs said, the words tasting bitter in his mouth. They’d expected this, he tried to tell himself. Their escape from that trap that had seemed such a miraculous deliverance had in reality changed nothing. They had known from the beginning that they danced this cotillion with death, and the devil was the fiddler.  The knowledge didn’t make defeat any easier to accept.

“Unless we can miraculously create sails from baggywrinkles, planks from splinters, and water from rum . . .” Jack’s voice trailed off, and he went completely still.

Gibbs eyed him curiously. Jack never stopped moving except when he was unconscious or about to become very dangerous.

“I’m havin’ a thought here, Gibbs,” Jack said, an introspective finger beginning to trace his chin, pausing to twirl a rain-dripping braid, a wicked glitter appearing in his eyes.  “Where is the closest source of re-supply for everything we need on the _Pearl?_ Food, water, medical supplies, canvas, spars, powder, everything.”

Gibbs felt a cold little worm coil around his neck and tap at his spinal cord. Jack’s “thoughts” often had that effect on him, and with good reason. “What bee have you got buzzin’ in that daft head o’ yours, Jack Sparrow?” he demanded suspiciously.

“Why, only this, Mr. Gibbs,” Jack said gesturing grandly as though displaying a priceless work of art.  “We are goin’ to take that little brig off the Royal Navy’s hands.  Take her and all her provisions and her tackle and her shot.”

Gibbs could scarcely summon words for several moments. Finally he choked, “That’s not possible, Jack.  We ain’t got more’n an ounce o’ dry powder between the lot o’ us.  All we got is a bunch o’ useless hunks o’ iron!”

Jack had that look in his eyes now that made Gibbs start calculating the odds on whether it was more prudent to be hopeful or to duck and run. It was accompanied by a grin as full of cursed gold as any Aztec chest. Gibbs knew that smile. He could trace nearly every madness-inducing, apoplexy-creating, bowel-voiding, life-threatening adventure in his life to one of those looks on Jack Sparrow’s face. And knowing that, Gibbs still found it as irresistible as an enchantment.

And Jack knew it, the bastard. The gold flashed even brighter. “All the more reason we need that brig more than the Navy does!” the captain exclaimed happily. “They broke my ship! They can bloody well help fix her! All we need is a plan.”  He strode off in the direction of his cabin, trailing clouds of insanity like a tattered cloak behind him. 

“Oh, I really want t’ hear you explain this one t’ Anamaria,” Gibbs muttered under his breath, and hurried to catch up.

* * * * *

TBC


	17. A Fine-Baited Delay

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jack begins to plot. How can he commandeer an armed and fighting Navy warship when he has no guns? The chase continues. The Navy pursues. The Black Pearl is falling apart.

The last spent light of that dreadful day seeped weakly through broken panes of glass and shot-crazed timbers, running a soft brush of pale grey over the two injured sleepers in the captain’s bed.  Into this scene, so still and funereal, Captain Jack Sparrow sparked and crackled like the flare of a flintlock before the powder ignites.

“Awake, you drunken slugabeds!” he caroled. “Now is not the time for inebriated snores, me hearties! Yo ho, yo ho, a pirate’s life for me!”

Gibbs winced, sincerely pitying the two with all his heart.  After all their suffering, sleep would have been a blessing could they have afforded the luxury.  But Jack was worse than a young cockerel at dawn when it came to letting sleeping pirates lie.

Duncan, who’d been out the longest, began to stir the first, his peaceful, quiet snores becoming snagged and snorting. 

“So sorry t’ have spoilt your nap, mate,” Jack apologized unrepentantly. “But your presence is required at the _Black Pearl_ ’s high council of war.  Your conscious presence that is.”

Duncan’s eyelids clenched more tightly, then flickered muzzily open. “Wha?” he said intelligently. Then he groaned.

At least it was nearly dark in the room.  Gibbs figured he’d have quite the head on him after all that rum.  Light would have been superfluous agony. 

“Give the man a pint o’ Adam’s ale,” Jack instructed his quartermaster. 

They’d made a side trip to carefully draw off some of their precious fresh water, knowing that both Duncan and Anamaria would be in need of something for thirst. Gibbs wasn’t sure he’d ever filled his flask with anything so prosaic before.

“Alas, it’s not coffee,” Jack lamented, “nor tea. That’s all been contaminated. And besides, the stove’s broke. But it’ll do ye good. So drink up, there’s a fine lad.”

In an uncomprehending haze, Duncan did as he was bid, gulping the water down methodically.  Gradually, his eyes started to clear, although he did not look like he was enjoying the process of becoming more alert.  “Who you callin’ a lad?” he growled at his captain.

Jack peered at him, the whites of his wide eyes gleaming in the gloom. “I was navigatin’ m’ first ship while you were still in little wee dresses, Duncan, me lad. You are never goin’ t’ catch up.”

“Humph,” Duncan said under his breath. “Din’t know they let babies navigate.” But then he subsided. A man suffering the aftereffects of that much rum had a poor sense of self-preservation if he took on a sober Jack Sparrow in a battle of wits, and Duncan was no fool. Besides, a new development seized his attention as he figured out just exactly which of his fellow pirates he was sharing a bed with. “Oh shit!” he exclaimed, lurching towards the cabin side, as far away from Anamaria as he could get without sliding through a crack in the planking and clinging to the exterior of the hull.

Jack began to laugh, then thought better of it and smirked. “No worries, mate. She’ll not bite this time. And think of the stories ye’ll have t’ tell! Sharin’ the captain’s bed with the first mate!  They’ll all be in awe of you!” A thoughtful look crossed his face. “Even I haven’t done that.” He glanced guardedly at the somnolent Anamaria.

The honour or the notoriety did not appear to tempt Duncan, who began edging off the end of the bed with extreme caution. As soon as his boots touched the deck, he was up and across the room with great alacrity, in spite of his broken arm and stitches.

“Not bad, for a man with a hangover like you must have,” Jack said admiringly. “Pull up a chair— _lad_ —and put your anchor down.”

“Aye, aye, _old man_ ,” Duncan saluted snidely, seating himself with the table safely between himself and the first mate. “Now what’s in the wind? I take it from the fact that we’re even havin’ this conversation that we didn’t get shot t’ hell by the _Dauntless?_ ”

“Oh, we most certainly did,” Jack said airily enough, though Gibbs noted his fingers never stopped exploring a deep gouge in the table top, mapping its length and breadth by touch. “But we’re tryin’ not t’ notice. Just givin’ hell a run for its money right about now. The devil’s takin’ us down a piece at a time.”

Duncan looked confused, so Gibbs quickly preempted whatever bizarre narrative Jack had been about to tell, and filled Duncan in on a rough outline of their situation.

Duncan looked grave when he’d finished. “Well, it’s better ‘n it could’ve been, but I’ve still seen prettier middens,” he commented thoughtfully. Looking up at the captain he asked, “And just what is it ye want me t’ be doin’ here?”

“You’re here t’ represent the crew’s opinion. And for a mere stripling, you’ve got a good head on your shoulders.” Jack observed Duncan’s rolled eyes consideringly. “Even if ye’ve pickled your brains with rum at the moment.”

“Grandfather,” said Duncan, “even with my rumhead, I can outthink your senile mind without half tryin’.”

Jack snorted in patent disbelief. “I’ve a kindness for ye, lad. So I’m goin’ to let that pass this time. But you just let me know if I’m goin’ too fast for you.”

Duncan leaned back in his chair. “Wake me when ye get t’ the point, old man.”

Jack grinned. “You’ll tell me how the crew’ll see this, Gibbs’ll tell me what bad luck it is, and Anamaria . . .” he glanced down at his first mate, leaned over and shook her shoulder a little. “Anamaria, love, are you with us?”  Anamaria made a small noise combining a whimper and a growl and didn’t wake up. Jack straightened and shrugged his good shoulder. “Anamaria is here to tell me I’m a chowderheaded gudgeon and I’m like to get you all killed, except she’s goin’ t’ kill me first—have I about covered it?”

“Don’t forget the slap,” Duncan offered lazily.

“Right,” said Jack. He reached down and brushed a tangled snarl of hair away from Anamaria’s face. “Never mind, darlin’. You just keep sleepin’. I’ll slap meself.” He turned back to the men gathered at the table. In the dim light the fine details of his face faded into obscurity.

“You want me t’ get that lit?” Gibbs pointed to the lantern above the bed.

Jack shook his head with a faint chime. “No lights if we can help it.  Not where they can see to target.  I’m not makin’ this easy for them.”

As if to prove his point, the _Pearl_ shook with a glancing blow from another of the _Defender’_ s shots. Shards of glass on the floor of the cabin chimed and hissed, and the wooden splinters rattled.

 Jack glared towards the stern, then leaned on the table with one hand. “Gentlemen,” he said earnestly. “It’s time we made some plans.”

“Plans for what?” Duncan asked.

Gibbs just shook his head and grimaced.

“Plans,” said Jack, “to acquire the materials and stores we need from the Royal Navy over on that little brig.”

“Oh,” Duncan said weakly. “Is that all?”

“That’s all,” Jack replied. “Shouldn’t be too much trouble t’ figure out for a bright spark like yourself, eh?”

“Oh, aye,” Duncan said, sarcasm thick in his voice.

 “And now, Captain,” Gibbs voice was light on the deference and heavy on the acerbity, “we’re waitin’, hangin’ on your every word.  You goin’ t’ enlighten us how you plan on takin’ a Navy warship—without any guns?”

“Or even any chickens?” Duncan added with a slow chuckle.

“I don’t plan on tryin’ to take her, gentlemen,” Jack glanced at his bed, “and lady.”

“But you said . . .” Gibbs spluttered. “Don’t tell me you’ve actually acquired some sense in your cockloft, Jack Sparrow!”

“Nothing of the sort, Mr. Gibbs.” Jack’s smile lit crazy gold fires in the dusky room.  “I’m going to let the _Defender_ take the _Black Pearl_.”

Silence met his statement like the sea in the eye of a storm.

Finally a single barely-audible voice broke its glassy surface.  “Jack Sparrow, there been times when I hoped that head o’ yours held at least one shot of wit, but now I know ‘tis unloaded.”

The men glanced at each other.  That hadn’t been any of them.

The captain grinned and turned to the lump in his bed. “Anamaria.  Welcome back.  I knew you’d say that. Here, let me prop you up so I can hear you lambast me better.” 

In the end, he had to ask for help with that, since he couldn’t support her shoulders and plump cushions behind her back with only one hand. But with Gibbs’ assistance, Anamaria eventually achieved a rather wilted-looking semi-upright position.  The only spark of life about her was her eyes, although even they were scarcely half her normal caliber. 

Noticing her licking dry lips, Jack remembered. “Gibbs, give the lass some o’ that swill so she can talk proper.”

Anamaria accepted the flask from Gibbs, gripping it tightly with both hands.  The stale, warm water tasted foul, but it was wet, which was all that mattered at the moment.  Her head felt fuzzy and flat, as though she had a bale of cotton sitting on it. Her leg was clamouring to claim her attention, but she ignored it.

While she was making inroads on the water, Jack made an ostentatious production of seating himself in a tattered chair, attempting to put his boots up on the table in his favourite pose for briefing his inner circle. But when he received notice from his ribs that such a maneuver was contraindicated, he settled for a more prosaic attitude. Tilting his head, he watched his audience with bright, challenging eyes.  Confounding his crew was one of the captain’s many perverse little amusements, and Anamaria, for one, was relieved to see he still had the spirit to do it.

“Now,” growled Gibbs, plunking himself down with the air of a man who will do violence if he doesn’t receive answers immediately, “will you get t’ tellin’ us just exactly why, after goin’ t’ such a mess of trouble t’ keep away from them Navy dogs, we’re goin’ t’ surrender? I thought we’d voted we weren’t doin’ that.”

“Who said anything about surrendering?” Jack asked indignantly.  “This is just like huntin’ tigers, only we’re usin’ ourselves as bait.  We only need to lure them close enough by lettin’ them think we’re an easy kill.  Then . . .” he slapped his hand on the table loudly enough to make everyone jump, “then, they’ll be in _our_ trap.”

His fellow pirates looked contemplative. There were possibilities in the captain’s suggestion.

With ardent persuasiveness, his voice as luring as any snare, Jack continued, “Even with a third of our men down, we’ll still outnumber the crew of a brig that size by nearly two to one.  Granted, those aren’t great odds when they have firepower, and we have none.  However, if they want to take the _Pearl_ , their captain is goin’ t’ have to commit the greater portion of his crew to boarding.  Which will leave his ship vulnerable.  We’ll just sneak across and nab her!” he finished with a triumphant flourish.

“The boats are gone, Jack,” Gibbs pointed out with much-tried patience. “How you plannin’ on sneakin’ across? Seems the grapnels and planks’ll be a bit obvious.”

“That’s why we’re going to swim,” said Jack, as though anyone should have been able to figure that one out.

“Swim,” said Anamaria flatly.

“Swim?” asked Duncan incredulously.

“Did somebody let that parrot in here?” Jack made an exaggerated show of peering around. Finding no parrots, he returned to the discussion, trying in frustration to illustrate his points with only one hand. “Yes. We’re going to swim.  Those are Navy sorts. Most of ‘em don’t swim, so it’s not a tactic that springs trippingly t’ mind for ‘em.  Why do you think I spent all that time drown-proofing this crew?  Bunch o’ bloody superstitious sailors. You’d ‘ve thought that I’d ordered ‘em t’ commit suicide.”

“Won’t they notice a bunch o’ live people in the water?” Gibbs asked.

“We won’t be in the water.  Not at first. These are the British, remember. They’re as dedicated to attacking from the windward side as if it were part of the Ten Commandments.  So, to get close, they’ll come in to starboard and heave to. While the _Defender_ ’s crew is boarding the _Pearl_ , we’ll drop out her larboard gunports, swim around t’ the stern of that brig, board over her taffrail and through her aft gunports, and likely have a three or four to one advantage over what men are left on that ship.”

There were gaps in that plan through which one could sail a first rate ship, and there were enough places where it could go wrong to give every one of Jack’s listeners a case of the chills.  But the hail of objections died down gradually as it became obvious that no one could think of a better idea.

Finally Gibbs, who had an old tars fervent distaste for saltwater unmediated by a ship’s hull, caved in.  “All right,” he grumbled.  “Supposin’ you’re right an’ we do manage t’ steal a boardin’ party onto that brig. Even imaginin’ you do succeed in commandeerin’ her, that still leaves the _Pearl_ in Navy hands, don’t it? How ye plannin’ on dealin’ with that?”

“That’s where things get a little tricky,” Jack admitted.

_A little tricky,_ the man said. Gibbs decided he’d never understand Jack Sparrow’s concept of the use of language. Communication clearly played no part in it. The way Gibbs saw it, the _Black Pearl,_ left with her wreckage of a crew and the few men like himself who could only manage a frantic dog paddle for a very few moments, would be swarming with unfriendly British sailors and marines bristling with bayonets and pistols and swords and every manner of instrument designed to turn living flesh into dead or dying flesh.  If they were extraordinarily lucky, Captain Sparrow, not so very undamaged himself, would be on that brig trying with all his twisted power over words to hoodwink the commander of the _Defender_ into believing the pirates had the tactical advantage.  But the only real advantage Jack would have would be if he succeeded in seizing control of the brig’s cannon, and then only if he were willing to use them.  Now there was a thought that didn’t bear looking at too closely.

Nevertheless, Gibbs found himself asking the question: “If they won’t surrender, will you fire on the _Pearl_ , Captain?”

Jack didn’t answer him immediately.  When he did speak, his voice was flat and emotionless. “They’re goin’ t’ have to believe I will, won’t they?”  He paused, bowing his head for a moment, his face shielded by the curtain of his hair.  When he looked up, mad sparks gleamed in his eyes. “Nothing has changed, Gibbs.  I’m not letting them have the _Pearl_ if it means I have to take her down myself.”

No one spoke as the import of his words dropped and sank.  None of them had ever considered what it might mean for Jack to be forced to destroy his own ship.  The concept scarcely seemed to have any real significance. 

“We can only pray that won’t be necessary,” Jack said at last with a sigh. “We’ll hope it only requires a small taste of hot lead to persuade them I mean what I say.”

Anamaria was the one to break what threatened to be an unending silence. “It seems to me, we’re gettin’ ahead of ourselves a bit here.  Before you can board that ship, don’t we need to come up with a way to convince them to board us without doin’ the sensible thing and settlin’ down at a nice safe distance to blow us to kindling and shark bait first?

“You make a most salient point,” Jack agreed as though relieved to have the topic changed even by the introduction of another thorny difficulty. “Any suggestions as to how we perform said miraculous feat?”

“We could always strike colours,” Duncan offered slowly, as though his thoughts were still mired elsewhere.

“And give that symbol the lie? Is that what you’re suggestin’?” Jack asked. “Surrender and then attack?”

“We’re pirates. What does our word mean?” Duncan shrugged.

“Aye, we’re a scurvy lot.” The captain nodded. “But a lowered ensign assures a man of safety as he boards—means he don’t come over the top firing.  If we stop observin’ it, we water it down.  I’ll not be doin’ that, mates.  If we ever need t’ ask quarter, I’d want it to be honoured. Besides,” he continued, “the _Black Pearl_ is not going to strike her colours to the Royal Navy. Not this time.  Not after all we’ve been through. So it’ll have t’ be some other form of deception.”

“Some lies are too much, even for a pirate?” Duncan quirked an eyebrow.

“Stupid lies,” Jack said firmly. “So find me a smart one.”

 They did their best.  Two chunks of former hull became the _Pearl_ and the _Defender_ as they played out different strategies. But every ploy came back to the same impasse. Any commander with the brains God gave an oyster would fire first and then come poking about the remains when he was good and sure there were next to no survivors.

As the small council of pirates continued to toss ideas into the air and sharpshoot them down, Captain Sparrow grew quieter and quieter, until he had withdrawn from the fray entirely.  The shadows that were gradually devouring all colour and distinct shape in the cabin gathered around him until he seemed sunken in a darkness that touched none of the rest of them.  Anamaria was the first to notice it.

“Jack?” she asked carefully. “What is it?”

The eyes he turned on her were blacker than stormy night, glittering fey and horrified. She did not think he saw her.

“Jack!” she demanded sharply. “Get back here! What’s wrong?”

Recognition seeped in, as though he were returning from some lost labyrinth of his mind. “No,” he said firmly.

The others looked at him blankly.

 “Will somebody please slap that man?” Anamaria asked plaintively. “I can’t reach him.”

 Three hands were raised, but Jack beat everyone else to it, smacking his own cheek smartly. His eyes warmed a little at Anamaria’s startled, quickly-muffled laugh. The tension that had suddenly weighed in on the room dissipated on a puff of air.

 But the captain’s face remained uncharacteristically grave as he elaborated. “No, those plans won’t work. None of them.”

“And why is that, old man?” Duncan asked.

“Because, lad,” Jack’s smile ghosted briefly, “we haven’t yet committed to what we have t’ do.”

A babble of protests arose at this accusation. 

 “What do you think we’re doin’ here, you daft fool?” Gibbs’ voice rose above the others

“You don’ t understand,” Jack persisted.  “We’re lookin’ for a way we can deceive the _Defender_ into believin’ we’re helpless when in fact we are not.”

 “That was the general idea, yes,” Gibbs grunted. “ _Your_ general idea, if I remember right.”

 “Well it won’t work,” Jack said. “They will come up on us, already wary of a trap. But they must not be suspicious.  They must _know_ we are helpless because, in fact, we _are._ ”

 Three sets of eyes narrowed at Jack threateningly.

“For the last time, Jack Sparrow,” Anamaria growled in exasperation. “Will you stop talkin’ in riddles and explain, before I shoot you to put us out of our misery!”

 “Your powder’s wet, love.” Jack smirked, but his heart was clearly not in the banter. He sighed and laid his hand perfectly still and flat on the tabletop.  “All right. I’ll be plain. I’m talkin’ about dismasting the _Pearl._ ” He did not look at them, simply stared at his hand as the fingers curled up into a fist.

For once, no one could think of a word to say.

Finally Gibbs managed hoarsely, “Do you know what you’re sayin’?”

“Aye,” said Jack, his voice as drained of colour as the light, “I know.”  He stood up, achingly slow, and moved to stand by one of the cabin windows, looking out at the last traces of dusk, his hand tracing the framing. “It means we risk all on a single roll of the dice.  They’ll believe their bombardment weakened our masts and the storm took ‘em down.  They will believe their eyes because it will be the truth—the _Pearl_ will be dead in the water.  We will have only one chance.  If we do not take the _Defender_ , she will most certainly take us.” He turned back to meet their shocked eyes. “But we forfeit this game if we do not throw.”

Stunned silence answered him.

“Am I wrong?” the captain asked gently.

“You should be!” Gibbs found his tongue. “There’s bound t’ be somethin’ wrong with such a bloody nodcock bacon-brained scheme!”

It was bad enough that they should sacrifice their hard-won ground, but to cut off every chance of escape? To leave no second plan, no room to maneuver, no margin for error? And that Jack should suggest it, for whom the _Black Pearl_ was the god of his idolatry—that convinced them, if nothing else had before, how truly dire was the condition of their ship. 

They argued with him half-heartedly, tossing a few highly improbable alternatives around. But in the end, as night closed in and the _Defender_ ceased fire in favour of running silent and listening hard, they gave in. First Duncan, then Gibbs, finally Anamaria.

At last Anamaria was alone in the cabin with the captain.

“Jack,” she asked. “Can you do this?”

He was silent for a long time.  When he answered, his voice was level and controlled, but she could hear the dread and anguish rip through the center of his words like shot through canvas. “Have to, don’t I?”

* * * * *

TBC


	18. To Watch the Night in Storms

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The setting of the trap for the Defender. A long night for all concerned. Every once in awhile, I have to write some raving sailing.

The oncoming night had gradually swathed the _Black Pearl_ in mystery.  First her topgallant masts had dissolved in the darkness, followed inexorably by her topmasts, and then even her courses had vanished as though they had never been. A man could scarcely believe she was there any longer at all were it not for the burn of rope in his palms and the press of planks against the soles of his feet.  Even her ceaseless communion with the wind and the sea seemed eerily disembodied.

The captain’s hand on his arm made Gibbs jump like a startled coney. “A pox on your throat, you uncharitable dog!” he hissed. “Stop doing that! I’m not as young as I once was.”

The ghost of Jack’s amused laugh tickled his ear.

He hadn’t heard the captain come up behind him on the quarterdeck. The man could be as fumble-footed as a newborn colt when his mind was elsewhere, an admittedly familiar destination for it, but when it suited Jack Sparrow to practice stealth, he made no more noise than a breath of air. Nerve-wracking, it could be. A man would be minding his own business, and suddenly, there would be the captain, minding it, too.  Kept the crew on their toes, of which Gibbs was all in favour, but he had another opinion of how much it kept him on edge.

Taking a deep breath to settle his heart back down in his chest where it belonged, Gibbs turned to confront his captain. “What is it?”

He could sense Jack was too close to his face for peace of mind, but he could not see even a glint of a gold tooth in the absence of any light from ship or cloud-girt sky.

“Shhhh,” Jack warned conspiratorially. “Listen.”

Gibbs could hear the steady plash of rain on the deck, the dash of the sea against the complaining hull, the creaking of rope and canvas and tackle, and the unending toiling of the pumps—all as normal as they were going to get.  The weather was dismal, but no longer dangerous.  He raised an unseen eyebrow at Jack and shrugged.  He had no idea what the captain wanted him to hear.

Detecting the bewildered movement of his quartermaster, the captain deigned to elucidate. “They got it going again.”

Gibbs could hear the smirk in Jack’s voice.

“Got what going?” he asked.

“That broken pump!” Jack said triumphantly.  “They’re all working now.”

How Jack Sparrow could tell such a thing baffled Gibbs, but he knew the captain would be right.  Sure enough, a thumping of jubilant boots sounded, and out of the gloom Hawkin’s white smile appeared in the sliver of light from the dark lantern he carried. 

“Captain! We did it! We fixed the pump!”

Jack’s answering grin flashed back gold lightning. “I never doubted you would, mate!” He clapped a hand on Hawkin’s shoulder. “Good work! Now douse that light as quick as you can.”

“Aye, sir. Thank ye, sir.” Hawkins clipped the sliding door closed, and then they could only hear his sure feet as he danced off, convinced he was a miracle worker. 

Gibbs just stood there shaking his head.  Apparently Jack could do more than talk the wind out of the sky.  Then he hurried to catch up to the captain, whose footsteps were already halfway to the helm.

“Cotton, my good man.” Jack’s bracing voice drifted back. “It’s time to give our lady a bit of a change in direction before she gets bored with this one!”

When he heard the heading the captain gave Cotton, Gibbs grimaced, unnoticed in the dark.

The parrot had an opinion, too. “Avast, ye lubber!”

“Captain,” Gibbs objected. “Cotton’s right. Ain’t that a bit off her best course in this wind?”

“Of course it is,” Jack agreed.  “The _Dauntless_ will be on that course.  The good commodore won’t have a choice if he hopes to see us again.  I don’t know about you, but the sooner I never see that man again, the happier I’ll be. There’s nothing we can do to get rid of that brig, but we’ve got to lose the _Dauntless._ ”

 “Aye,” Gibbs conceded. “I have t’ admit to a devout wish to be better strangers with that ship.”

The parrot added his approval to the sentiment. “Let go and haul!”

For an instant a flame flared in the lantern by the compass in the binnacle as the helmsman adjusted the ship’s wheel to bring her onto her new course.  Then, as quickly, the light went out.

As Gibbs felt his way back to the main decks to see to the trimming of the sails, he reflected grimly that Jack was right. The new heading would work just as badly for the _Defender_ as it did for the _Pearl._   But if Norrington came upon them, masts down and totally helpless, they’d all face the gallows or be feeding the sharks by set of tomorrow’s sun.

* * * * *

With the last vestiges of rum worn off, Anamaria did not sleep well after Jack had left the cabin. She drifted on a sea of restless, pain-filled nightmares, ebbing and flowing in and out of the far worse nightmare that was the truth, living over and over again the horrors of the past day. The ink of darkness, crushing her like the weight of water, re-etched pictures in her head, bringing them to appalling life—crumpled too-still bodies, decks drenched in blood, men writhing and screaming. The moment she’d thought Jack was dead.  The moment she’d known she was.  She wanted to run from them, but there was nowhere she could flee that would make them not have happened.

Her leg felt leaden and tight, as though it were dragging her further down into lightlessness, and she had to resist the urge to remove Peytoe’s bandages to feel if the stitches were pulling out from the swelling. The constant ache shot through with darts of severe pain kept bringing her to the surface of consciousness with the sound of her own moans, a weakness she immediately stifled. Her head seemed hot and heavy and too large for her to lift.

Oh, how she wanted the night to be over! How she wanted not to be alone!  She even wished Duncan were still there, a solid, human presence that she might reach out and touch and know was real.  Several times she had to cram her knuckles into her mouth to prevent herself from calling for someone.  Anyone. Once she thought her grandmother was there stroking her hand, singing to her, but that was nonsense, and the sensations faded away like mist.  Once she thought she felt again the brush of feathers and heard the _Black Pearl_ whisper words she did not understand.  Once she thought Jack was there, felt his cool fingers on her hot forehead, heard him say her name; however, when she expected him to disappear, too, he really was there, holding water to her parched lips, supporting her head while she drank. Then he vanished as well, not into thin air, but with the quiet closing of a door.

Throughout long periods of unbearable half-wakefulness, when it seemed the night would lengthen and draw out forever, Anamaria listened to the _Pearl_ , aching to be out on deck and a part of the efforts to save her, trying to picture what was happening, hearing footsteps overhead—picking out the steady pace of Jack’s when the ship rolled heavily and everyone else stumbled.  The continuous grind of the pumps in their failing battle against the water in the holds and the unending groans of the ship as the wind pressed her against the sea filled in the background of her entire sightless world.  Occasionally a raised voice would sound above the other noises, but for the most part the men were quiet. A few times a cry of agony lacerated the night, and her heart would wrench, causing her to hug the sodden blankets to her chest and shiver while she fought not to imagine. The only peace was the cessation of the _Defender_ ’s fire, but somewhere out in the dark, that brig paced them, listening for the slightest of those sounds from the _Black Pearl_.

 They were safe in this stygian absence of light, as long as the ship stayed afloat. But even so, Anamaria’s loathing of the dark grew more swollen and bitter every moment of that livelong night.

* * * * *

The predicted storm struck suddenly, with a banshee wail of fury.  One minute it was flickers of light on the horizon, the next, like the hand of the devil, it picked up the great ship and dashed her over into the seas.  Before its force, the _Black Pearl_ leapt like a high-couraged horse under the lash of the whip. Her remaining sails boomed like cannon shots as they filled with wind, her rigging sang as taut as the strings of violins, and her wounded hull screamed in protest as the storm swells hammered against her.

Gibbs really wished Jack had not been quite so accurate in his estimate of this gale. They needed the speed of those blasts, they needed the _Pearl_ ’s uncanny seaworthiness in the worst tempests, they needed this chance to outrace the smaller, less daring brig.  But this was a storm that could just as easily take their own crippled ship down.

The air sizzled against his skin, raising the hair on his arms and singeing his nostrils. Forked tongues of lightning licked burning trails into the boiling seas.  Thunder cracked like the mighty flight of dragon wings.  One instant the black spars and torn sails stood out in sinister detail, every gossamer line as crisp and clear as day.  The next it was as if the ship had been swallowed by a great growling beast, and a man could not see his mate standing at his shoulder. Ghostly bursts of foam gleamed through the darkness as waves broke roaring over the decks and swept aft in torrents.

The _Defender_ was a forgotten menace as the crew fought to hold their fragile ship together amidst the overpowering explosion of wind, the rain falling in blinding sheets, and the spray stinging like flung shot.  Men spent half their time hanging onto yards and jackstays and various lines as tight as limpets to avoid getting hurled into the sea.  Gibbs could see their faces, in the flashes of blinding light, drained pale beneath the shine of salt water, as he delivered Jack’s orders. All depended on these ragged exhausted men, hungry, battle-weary, too tired to piss, pushed beyond endurance, their strength sapped by the wind that leached heat from their soaked bodies.  They struggled until their hearts were breaking with the sweating, cursing, hauling, bloody labour of keeping the ship on course and afloat.  No words could convey their extravagant suffering, nor their extraordinary courage.

The _Pearl_ was making heavy going of it too, plunging into endless lines of battering seas, burying her bow to the foremast, throwing spray past the poop deck, driving as fierce as a ship would be driven.  She was heeled achingly hard over, her lee-rail awash in foaming water, her timbers wailing their protest, the deep-down steps of her masts groaning.  If they weren’t careful there’d be no need to await Jack’s plan.  Surely the storm was near to dismasting the ship for them.

Gibbs fought his way to the captain’s side. He found Jack hanging with a hand on the weather shrouds, soaking wet and stiff with cold, his fatigue so profound he’d closed his eyes and drifted off.

Shaking Jack’s arm he shouted in his ear, “Wind’s about t’ rip her sails out o’ their bolt ropes, sir! Shall I get the t’gallants off her?

“Can you see her bowsprit still?” the captain growled, opening one eye to see for himself.

“Aye, if you look for it long enough!” Gibbs exclaimed.

“She’s all right then, Gibbs. Leave her be,” Jack said tiredly and opened the other eye to peer out through the sheets of spume into the storm, watching in the flashes of lightning for patterns of waves and the shapes and complex layers of clouds, reading like a prophet the portents of tone and pitch in the wind, forever weighing the odds. 

“Ol’ Neptune’s shaking his trident, tonight, eh?” he commented to Gibbs. “Good thing this one ain’t got any stamina.”

Sailing one of these great ships took an artistry bordering upon magic, and Gibbs knew that he would never serve under a man with more of the wizardry of the sea flashing from his fingertips than Captain Jack Sparrow.  Jack claimed he’d been born in a storm at sea, and at times like these, Gibbs thought maybe that one story was true.

Which was why, in the midst of his own fear, he reassured the terrified men who approached him, “Cap’n knows this ship and what she’ll take.” 

* * * * *

Jack did know his ship, but he was aware that he was requesting more of his _Black Pearl_ than he ever could have from any other ship.  He knew Gibbs trusted his judgment, knew the men would follow his orders.  Above all, he knew that the _Pearl_ would break her heart trying to do for him what he asked.  But what if he asked too much? This gradually sinking ship and the lives of all aboard were in his hands. Would she stand all that straining sail? Was it safe to carry on?

He didn’t know any more.  Too many variables had entered into the equation. All he did know was that they must be out of sight and sound of that brig by the time this storm was over, and that meant he had to be far more daring than the Navy captain. It meant the _Pearl_ had to sail far harder than the _Defender_ through this tempest.  It meant that even if his decisions sent her to the bottom, he had to press on. 

As captain, he lived with this ship; he was a part of her.  Her every lurch and roll, every slight variation in the wind’s roar in her rigging, spoke to him.  He could detect a note of growing protest, a sudden gesture of alarm and be ready to act on the instant.  He’d always been able to hold her to that fine line of the possible, had always known he could bring her through whatever he’d set her at. But now he was pushing her beyond what he knew she could do. They were sailing over the edge of the line into destruction. He diced with death this night—for the life of his ship, for the lives of his crew. 

Yet in the midst of this peril, how magnificent she was! His _Black Pearl._  

As the wind howled its ancient loneliness, she sang back its wild refrain through her rigging, rejoicing in this contest.  Soaring in scorn above the insensate wrath of the sea, her tall masts scraped fire from the skies. She porpoised and plunged from crest to trough with crashes that felt and sounded as if she were driving into sunken rocks. Her bowsprit heaved to heaven on the breaking waves, then rushed down through masses of foam into deep deathlike valleys.  And yet, as always, in the midst of the thunderous fury of the elements beating against her, seeking to crush and rend her, she strung his soul to her eternal beauty. Even in her weakness, she lent him strength.

Jack held on to his ship as though the touch of his hand could return that strength back to her.

* * * * *

The storm provided a tempestuous background for Anamaria’s worst half-awake dreams. The thunder boomed like shot thudding through splintered wood.  The flare of lightning pierced her feverish eyes like cannon fire even through tightly closed lids. Each rolling swoop of the ship skewing down the back of a wave sent Anamaria slamming against the bulkheads unless her battered hands could grip the bed frame hard enough. She felt as though she were being beaten by the sea. Every involuntary movement was a torment as the damaged muscles in her injured leg attempted to tighten in resistance. Once, she was nearly thrown off the bed, saving herself at the expense of a wrenched elbow and several snapped stitches.  The heat of fresh blood soaked through the stiffened bandages.

Anamaria flung her own curses back at the tempest and grimly hung on.

By the time the gale stood down, Anamaria was drenched in sweat again, trembling with exhaustion, and blaspheming brokenly. She could scarcely uncurl her hands from where she’d driven her nails into the wooden frame of the bed. Her breath came in hitching gasps that she was fervently grateful there was no one around to hear. 

When she had finally succeeded in banishing the pain from her conscious mind to a sufficient degree, Anamaria began to be aware of the deliberate violation of the _Black Pearl._   Although she had said nothing, Jack had promised her he’d only drop the main and mizzen masts.  The foremast, with the stays she’d fought so hard to bend on, would remain upright.  She hadn’t known how much that would mean to her until he’d said it.

Now she strained to hear the sounds of the ship being dismantled.  Gibbs’ delivering the captain’s orders to the crew to rig the tackle that would bring down the _Pearl_ ’s masts with the least possible damage to spars or ship.  The occasional rise in the crew’s voices as they worked blindly, feeling their way among lines and blocks and yards they knew like their own bones and sinews. And finally, as the opaque blackness was barely turning to a deep charcoal, the agonizing stretch and grind of tackle, the groan of the heavy wooden main and mizzen topmasts being raised, the heart-rending crash of spars and rigging as they fell towards the sea, wrenching the _Pearl_ onto her port side, and then the tremendous splash of water as the fallen masts, with their burden of sails and rigging, brought up against its surface. The ship lay mortally wounded in the water, shuddering profoundly.

 The _Black Pearl_ had survived all storms, all perils of the sea, all fierce battles without ever having allowed her masts to fall, but now the proud ship lay cut down for the first time by her own crew. Anamaria realized her face was wet with tears.

She managed to roll to where she could press up against the side of the ship, murmuring broken endearments and encouragements against the satiny wood, promising her—Oh!—Anything a ship could desire!—Strong, straight spars, stiff new canvas, unmarred planking, her crew well and hearty again, a fine brisk wind on a bright day with a following sea, dolphins dancing in her bow wave, and voices singing on her decks. Above all, her captain whole and at her helm. Everything this gallant lady so richly deserved.

She was not surprised when Jack stumbled into the cabin. In the pre-dawn dark, she could not see him, but she could hear his ragged breathing.

“Anamaria?” he choked.

“Jack,” was all she said.

And then he was in her arms, shoulders shaking, clinging like a child but so much fiercer, while she held him tight and stroked his tangled hair.

“Oh my God! Ana, what have I done?” His words broke against her neck, as hot as the tears he would not shed.

She had no words to answer that.  And so she tightened her arms around him, tasting the rough, wet, salt of his hair on her lips, her own heart echoing with the ache of his grief.

“She fought so hard,” he whispered, the words torn and frayed. “She would have gone on fighting. But I took that from her.”

“You did what you had to do,” she murmured, her hand moving in soothing circles against the halyard-taut muscles of his back. “The only thing that will give us a chance.  The only thing that will give her a chance. Shhhhh. It’s all right.  She understands.”

And she blessed the unrevealing darkness that stood in place of all the barriers that would have risen between them had this moment of comfort been forced to bear the light of day and truth.

 * * * * *

The dawn was just beginning to ease the night and brush the crests of sullen waves with dim pewter when the man on lookout at the crosstrees of the _Defender_ called out.  Their quarry had been sighted once again.

As his brig altered course to intercept the pirate ship, Captain Walton felt a wash of sheer relief.  In the clash and fury of the elements they had caught glimpses of the _Black Pearl_ , a ghostly, tattered silhouette against coruscations of fire, fleeing like a demon before the wrath of God. But when the tempest had finally wailed and beaten its rage into a fretful calm, they’d been unable to locate her by sound or sight in the pitchy dark.  Apparently Sparrow had tried to seize the ferocity of that gale to outrace the _Defender_.  For a time, Walton had very much feared he had succeeded, and they had lost their prey. But in the end, the pirate captain’s gamble had cost him the match. 

The _Black Pearl_ listed brokenly, wrenched over by her shattered main and mizzen masts, a barely perceptible shadow inked against the attenuating sable silk of sky and water, as though a fragment of that midnight storm had fallen, lightning-struck, from heaven and lay dying in the cradling arms of the sea.

The legendary ship rested helpless now.  To the _Defender_ and Captain Alexander Walton would belong the renown of taking her down and capturing that elusive pirate, Captain Jack Sparrow.

Of course he did not yet know what numbers the pirates could muster to resist his boarding party.  He was confident that the terrible bombardment that ship had taken had significantly reduced the living, or at least able-bodied men they would be engaging. Nevertheless, he would have to commit a large portion of his crew to the action if they were to have any hope of subduing desperate men fighting for their lives.

Calling together his officers in the wardroom, Walton threw himself into a feverish intensity of planning.  With a brisk wind on their starboard quarter, all sails up to the topgallants bellying full, and a following sea, the _Defender_ would be upon the wreck of the _Black Pearl_ within the next two hours.  This time, they would make no mistakes.

* * * * *

TBC


	19. Valour’s Show and Valour’s Worth

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> On the Dauntless Norrington is on the hunt for the Black Pearl, but something more is at stake than the outcome of a battle.

The dawn had barely raised the curtains of night sufficiently for Commodore Norrington to make out the pale ghost of the main course before he was pacing the weather side of the quarterdeck, his tongue firmly battened down between his teeth so that he did not frustrate the lookout with needless queries when the poor man could in no way have reasonably caught sight of anything other than the portions of spar and canvas closest to the maintop.

He’d spent a sleepless night, enduring the sounds and sights of the previous day’s work repeating themselves in gory succession on the insides of his eyelids.  In his dreams the crimson-tinged water pouring from the _Black Pearl_ ’s washports turned the seas to blood. The spray of red dashing over the bow of the _Dauntless_ spattered his uniform and his face until he could get neither his clothing nor his skin clean no matter how many nightmare hours he scrubbed.

Norrington had actually been grateful for the storm, arriving on deck several minutes before it actually struck.  It was a relief to have something he could fight, even if it was only the elements.

But now as the sky reluctantly faded to a pearly grey, he found himself and his ship alone on a steel-colored circle of sea bounded only by horizon. Of the _Defender_ and the _Black Pearl_ there was not a trace.  He hoped that Captain Walton was not undergoing a similar experience.  As for Captain Sparrow, God only knew where he’d flown to. And Norrington had his doubts about that, though it was entirely possible the Devil would know.  That pirate could very easily have altered course during the night, in which case the _Dauntless_ could charge along as briskly as she pleased and never cross paths with that dark ship though she circumnavigated the globe. 

If Sparrow had managed to elude the _Defender_ , he would no doubt be whisking into some secret harbour to repair his ship as soon as possible.  Which meant he could be in any of a thousand known or unknown hideouts in the scattered clusters of islands in this part of the Caribbean.  The thought made the commodore’s head ache.  If Walton did not have the _Black Pearl_ in his sights, they were back to where they had started months ago—trying to find reliable intelligence on the pirate’s bolt holes. And then trying to find that slippery ship occupying one of them.

Reliable intelligence.  A thoughtful frown creased Commodore Norrington’s brow.  He had a source of intelligence aboard his ship at this very moment.  His previous efforts to question the boy had not been remarkable for their success, but the child had spent a night seriously injured.  He might not be so capable of resistance.  Tiny prickles of conscience reminded Norrington that such a course might not smack so finely of honour, but he was tired and frankly desperate, so he ignored them.

It couldn’t hurt to ask a few questions.

As he approached the surgery, the odour reached out and twisted the commodore’s senses like a tangible claw—the too-familiar stench of decaying flesh.  He knew before he opened the door that Samuels’ report would not be positive. 

Peering into the dimly lit room, trying not to breathe, he caught the doctor’s eye and motioned for the man to join him outside. 

“How is he?” Norrington asked in a low voice, when the door had closed behind Samuels.

The doctor simply shook his head. 

“It is gangrene?” The commodore looked towards the closed door and wrinkled his nose.

“Yes,” Samuels sighed.  “I’m going to have to amputate.”

“Damn.”

“It’s hard enough when they’re your own,” the doctor said, leaning an elbow against the bulkhead and rubbing his hand across his eyes. “But at least they have their mates, people they trust.  This poor child is all alone here.  Oh, he’s trying to act brave, the cheeky little blighter that he is, but he cries for that captain of his in his sleep.” The doctor paused and frowned. “Something puzzles me about that.  That child has been beaten to within an inch of his life at some point in the past. More than once. He’s got scars worthy of a Navy hardcase.  And yet, he seems quite attached to that pirate.”

Norrington shrugged. “He would not have been beaten on the _Black Pearl_.  While I would never have considered Jack Sparrow a father figure, he is not the type to abuse his crew.” 

“Ah!” Samuels nodded, enlightened. “Well that makes some sense then. You never know about these pirates—some of the stories one hears . . . The boy would feel a sense of obligation to anyone who removed him from whatever situation left those scars.”

 “Is he awake?” the commodore asked.

“Depends what you call awake,” Samuels said dryly.  “He’s been drifting in and out all night. Feverish, you know. Sometimes he doesn’t seem to know where he is.  He’s conscious right now, if that’s what you mean.”

“I would like to speak to him,” Norrington said.

The doctor shot him a sharp look with a touch of microscope in it.  Norrington felt scrutinized, labeled and catalogued.

“That,” said Samuels severely, “was the commodore speaking. And I’m not sure he’s welcome in my surgery right now.”

“And that,” responded Norrington evenly, “was my old friend Gil speaking, when by rights it should have been the ship’s doctor.”

“Just what, exactly, do you intend to speak to my patient about?” Samuels demanded.  “The weather? The latest social _on dits_? The criminal price of tea?”

“I have a few questions for which I am in need of answers.  The boy may have those answers,” Norrington said.

The doctor’s mouth twisted in a grimace. “Interrogation. Really James, I had not thought it of you.”

“I do many things you would not think of me, Gil,” Norrington said, stepping towards the door. The doctor moved to block his passage. The commodore narrowed his eyes and said coolly, “Do I need to make this an order? I would see the boy.”

“No, Commodore,” Samuels said, the frost brittling his voice. “No orders are necessary.”  And he stood aside.

But he followed the commodore into the surgery.

Commodore Norrington felt like a traitor, planning to utilize a child’s pain and fear and delirium to wring information that would lead the Navy to the _Black Pearl._   But the opportunity to plumb those secrets was not one he could afford to pass up.  His mind felt dirty, as though he needed to scrub it with sand and rinse it thoroughly in clear water, but there would be no escape from this gritting discomfort. 

“Doctor, would you please leave us.” It was not a request.  He knew Samuels would disapprove.  But he didn’t have time for arguments.

The look in the doctor’s eyes as he ducked back out the door could have ignited wet canvas. 

Alone with the boy, he saw the sheen of sweat on the slight body, the too-rapid rise and fall of the thin chest, the restless movement of small hands on the rough cover, the lines of pain on a face far too young for such lines. There were times when Commodore Norrington’s rank and responsibilities pressed on his brow like a crown of thorns.  Jip’s clouded eyes looked up at him but did not see.

“Captain,” he whispered fretfully.

“Your captain is not here, son,” Norrington soothed.  “I’m sorry.”

“Captain!” The boy’s voice was stronger, more desperate. “Don’t let them . . .” he trailed off.  Tears squeezed out from beneath dark lashes.

“I’ll take you to your Captain, Jip.  But you must tell me where to find him,” Norrington suggested, holding his breath.  Would the boy reveal anything of any use?

“I don’t know where he is! Why isn’t he here?”

“His ship was damaged.  There was a storm.  Where do you think he might go to make repairs?”

The blue eyes opened wide, fevered and sightless. “The deepest circle of hell!” the child gasped.

What? If that was an answer to his question, he’d already waited too long to ask it.  Although the answer made a certain amount of perverse sense . . . 

Jip closed his eyes again. “For betrayers.”

Oh.

“I will not tell you,” the boy whispered through clenched teeth. “I will not tell you anything.”

Norrington left the sickroom, his own face burning as though he shared Jip’s fever.  He hoped Jack Sparrow appreciated just what kind of loyalty he possessed in this one smallest crewmember.

The doctor met him outside the door. 

“Didn’t tell you a thing, did he?”  Samuels was looking entirely too smug for a Royal Navy man. “Pluck to the backbone, that one.”

“Oh he’s a game one all right. It’s rather too bad that he’s on the wrong side.”

Samuels put a hand on the commodore’s arm. “Come on, James. Look me in the eye and tell me you aren’t glad he held out on you.”

Norrington’s mouth twisted wryly. “It is my duty to get that information any way I can, Gil.”

“Truth, James,” Gilbert Samuels persisted.

“Truth?” The question was thick with irony. “What is the truth? The truth is I failed. The truth is I set the perfect trap and Sparrow still flew it. The truth is I don’t believe Walton will take him. Not now. Not after that. And the truth is I have no idea where to start looking again, thanks to one stubborn child.”

“So?”

“So, you thorn in my flesh, yes. The truth is that in spite of it all, I am glad to find honour among thieves. Are you happy now?”

“I’m always happy when you cease trying to wriggle away from your humanity, my lad,” Samuels said gravely. “That boy may be a pirate and a source of information, but he is also a child who is injured and who has lost his only home and family.  Remember that. And now that I’ve got you where I want you, I have a request.”

Norrington eyed him suspiciously. “Is this some sort of a trick?”

But Samuels did not have the look of a man who wasn’t serious. “I’d like you to assist me with the amputation, James.”

“What?” Norrington was startled, not only because that was not in the least one of the commodore’s normal duties. It wasn’t that he couldn’t do it. He’d been involved in more than sufficient surgical procedures since he was a mid.  But, “Why me?” he asked bewildered. “I did not think you would trust me with that boy.”

“Whether or not I trust you is a moot point, Commodore,” Samuels said. “Jip trusts you.  Thanks to the recommendation of that pirate you’re pursuing.  He’s got no one else on this ship whose name he even knows. I’m asking this for him, not you.”

Norrington raised an eyebrow at him. “I guess that has put me in my place.”

Samuels smiled ruefully. “You are a good man James Norrington, even though sometimes you lose your way in that labyrinth of gold braid.” He tapped the offending material on James chest. “Will you lend a hand then?”

“Yes, of course,” the commodore agreed. “And might I suggest Lieutenant Groves as well. The boy may not know him, but Groves appreciates his spirit and dotes most unprofessionally on that pirate captain of whom Jip is so fond.”

“Thank you, James. I’ll do that.”  Samuels turned to head in his surgery door; then he paused and looked back over his shoulder. “Though, Commodore, if you open your mouth to ask that child a single question while he’s under my knife, the next thing that is coming off is your tongue.”

* * * * *

TBC


	20. The Natural Shocks That Flesh is Heir To

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> On the Black Pearl Jack Sparrow is on the hunt for a way to get out of an awkward situation with his and Anamaria’s dignity intact. The Muse made me do this! I claim no responsibility. This has nothing to do with the plot, but do you think I could get it out of my head once the question was raised? I mean this had to happen and it had to be a problem, but why couldn’t I have ignored the possibility like ninety-nine percent of fanfic writers?

With the _Defender_ sweeping down upon them, and the attack only hours away, Captain Jack Sparrow seethed with a whirlpool of plans that kept sucking down his ideas and spitting out new difficulties.  The fact that his _Black Pearl_ was masts down and leaking like an unstanched wench was gnawing at the back of his neck, but he was getting used to it.  In the hour before sunrise, he’d made his peace with her. She would protect him with her broken wings.  And he would make her persecutors pay.

At least he had succeeded in the one all-important thing. There was no sign of the _Dauntless_ anywhere on the horizon.

With a trample of boots, the captain clattered down the companionway stairs and barged into his cabin, intent on ship’s business.  The grey morning sky was just now beginning to shed enough light through the shattered windows that he could see Anamaria’s eyes were turned on him.  Good.  She was awake.

“Anamaria,” he said crisply. “I’m making up the boarding party roster, and I’d like your opinion.”  Normally this would have been her task, but he hadn’t wanted to burden her with too much just yet.  However, he valued her detailed knowledge of the crew.  “Bishop, Mkosi, Bartholomeo, Asfar, and Scuttlebutt,” he listed.  “They’re able-bodied, but I’m not sure they can handle the swim.  Weather’s calmed down considerable, but there’s still a storm swell.  What say you? Do I tell ‘em aye or nay?”

His first mate looked like a rag that had seen too many washings, except for a worrisome flush patching her cheekbones.  She seemed to be having a hard time concentrating on what he was saying.  Not good. 

Crossing the room to her side, he laid the back of his hand against her cheek.  She flinched away from his touch, but not before he felt the summer day heat where she should have been as chilled as he was. Just as he had feared, her fever had not subsided. In fact, if anything, it was worse. 

“I’m fine,” she snapped at him distractedly. “Naught you can do about it anyway.”

He shrugged. She was right. Time enough to worry about inflammations after they’d survived the next few hours. “Can you give me any suggestions on the men?” he repeated.

“Asfar,” she said in a tight voice. “Strong as an ox. He’ll make it well enough, and you’ll need him on the _Defender_. Scuttlebutt. He’s improved a lot. Give him a chance. The others. No.  Leave ‘em here.” Then she closed her eyes.

Jack nodded. Her analysis coincided with his own. But at the level of fatigue he currently found himself, it was reassuring to know he wasn’t making a drastic mull of things.  “Thanks, love,” he said. “I’ll be off then. Anything I can get sent to you? Rum? Water?”

“Oh God, no!”

Her vehemence startled him. “No worries!” He held up his hand, placating. “Didn’t mean to offend. I won’t send you a thing.”

When he received no answer, and she didn’t look at him again, Jack turned to go.  Likely Anamaria was in too much pain, and it was making her as surly as a spavined mule.  He’d just sneak on out while his head was still firmly attached to his neck.

He’d almost made it to the door when her voice stopped him.

“Jack?”

He paused, startled.  That was not a tone of voice he’d ever heard from Anamaria—plaintive and miserable.

He turned back. “What is it, love?”

She didn’t respond, and she was studying the bulkhead with fierce fascination although it looked like a perfectly ordinary, boring strip of planking. Well, it was a piece of his _Pearl_ and therefore infinitely lovely, but still. 

“Anamaria?” he prompted to the back of her head.

She seemed tense now and unwilling to speak, another unnatural phenomenon. Jack’s concern ratcheted up a notch.  He took a step towards her.

“I’ve got to use the head,” she bit off fiercely, still not turning to face him.

Oh hell. 

After all that rum and water, she would.  He could hear her anger and humiliation at having to ask for help.  She was never going to trust him to help her, either. And if she had to let him anyway, she was never going to forgive him.  Then he remembered his ribs.  He wasn’t going to be able to manage this alone.

Oh hell!

“No problem . . .” he started to say “darling” then thought better of it “. . . we’ll figure out something.” He tried to sound bracing and reassuring and indifferent and it wasn’t working.  There she was, looking wretched and vulnerable.  And Anamaria did not look vulnerable with four inches of steel driven into her thigh, as he had cause to know.

Oh hell. 

If she’d been one of the lightskirts with whom he’d had dealings in any number of ports, he’d have had no difficulties in such a situation. Might even be a bit of fun. Certainly a lot of laughs.  Definitely matter-of-fact.  But this was Anamaria, proud and dangerous and thin-skinned and chaste as a nun while on board his ship.  The men treated her with the utmost circumspection—well, except for him.  Which wasn’t making this any easier now, was it?

Jack’s normally agile mind nearly stuttered to a halt trying to picture any way for the two of them to get out of this with dignity intact. 

“You know, this would be a whole heap more convenient if you were a man,” he complained.  “For one thing, you wouldn’t care if I saw anything I shouldn’t.  And for another you’d not need to shed quite so very much.  Are you sure we can’t just pretend this don’t matter?  I swear if I see anything I’ve not seen before I’ll shoot it and run.”

Anamaria’s glare could have roasted a whole hog.  If she’d been armed, she’d have shot him with no running at all.  Jack backed up a step.

Wait just one moment. He was having a thought here.  Life-threatening situations tended to do that for him.  Lightskirts.  There was a reason women wore those ridiculous, yardgoods-intensive contraptions other than just easy access for a quick tup in a dark corner.

“Wait right here,” he informed Anamaria. “I have just the thing.”

* * * * *

_Wait right here_ , he’d said.  Like she was capable of going anywhere!

Anamaria decided that she was in a state of revolution with her body.  Normally she scarcely noticed she had one, but at the moment it was practically all she could think about. Her eyes felt like desert islands, hot and dry and full of sand, while the rats were viciously gnawing away at the backs of her eyeballs.  Her mouth tasted of bilgewater.   Her injured leg felt thick and stiff, as though she were dragging about one of the Pearl’s topgallant yards when she attempted to move it.  But the pain and assorted miseries would have been endurable had not the need to relieve herself already passed from a good idea to a flaming necessity. 

It didn’t help that her spirit was smarting.  Confiding in the captain had taken an act of will more wrenching than crawling out on that bowsprit.  Anamaria despised being helpless with a deep and eternal hatred. 

Whatever brilliantly mad plan Jack had gone in pursuit of, it would require that she at least sit up.  Therefore, she would sit up.  Without his help.  Even though she felt as limp as a sail in the doldrums.  With teeth-gritted determination, she managed to make it up onto her elbows before Jack reappeared in the cabin doorway looking pleased with himself. 

“Oh good,” he said. “You’re almost up.  Look what I’ve got!”  He waved about a pewter, jug-like container with a wide opening and a handle. “Item: One chamber pot.  Every lady with a shard of spritsail yard driven up her leg should have one!” He plunked the object on the table and disappeared out the door again.

By his next entrance, Anamaria was sitting up, braced on shaking arms and slightly nauseated.

Jack was awkwardly kicking in front of him a rather worse-for-wear piece of furniture. “Item: One backless chair, courtesy of Tearlach,” he grunted. “Man don’t know his own strength. Between him an’ Matelot, it’s a wonder there’s anything left o’ the _Pearl_ for the Navy t’ shoot at.” He manuevered the chair to the bedside and placed the chamber pot on the seat.

Anamaria, feeling as though her head was caught in a high wind, squinted up at Jack.  There was something disturbing about him, she decided woozily. “There’s two of you,” she muttered. “No wait, there’s three, no two. Jack Sparrow, one of you is enough for this world. This is just wrong.”

“You’re only a little dizzy, love,” Jack reassured her. “It’ll pass. But if it don’t, there’s many a lass’d like more than one o’ me!”

Anamaria wasn’t dead enough to let that pass. “And more that’d like none,” she snorted.

All the Jacks smirked at her. “I knew you’d be feeling better soon,” they said.

However many of him there were became exceedingly interested in one of the chests across the room.  He gingerly lowered himself to sit on a neighbouring trunk and unstrapped the lid. By the time Jack had finished rummaging through the contents which included, among other esoteric items, a carved elephant tusk; a red and yellow feathered mask, slightly tattered; a velvet brocade coat, extremely tattered; a large Chinese lacquered vase; and a dried and stuffed mermaid looking suspiciously like a monkey body attached to a fish tail and smelling vilely of camphor, Anamaria was focusing more clearly, although the ship still seemed to be wavering around her.

“What are you looking for?” she asked impatiently.  The need for him to be done with whatever he was doing and assist her was not diminishing.

“This,” Jack exclaimed triumphantly, rising with an amorphous mountain of dark crimson fabric in his arms. “Item: One dress.  I thought I remembered there was one in here.  You could hide an army under this skirt, love.  Possibly with room left over for a fully rigged ship. Or in this case a chair and a chamber pot.”

Moving to the side of the bed, Jack frowned at Anamaria as though she were a puzzle he couldn’t quite solve. “Do I need to get someone to help you stand up?” he asked.

“No.” Anamaria said quickly. “Just you. Not one of the crew. I have arms and one working leg.”

“You do remember I’m not much use for lifting, eh lass?” Jack warned, waving a demonstrative hand at his sling.

“Just keep me from falling on my face, that’s all,” she answered grimly. But she quickly discovered that she wasn’t going to be moving her stiffened leg on her own. At least not and remain conscious.

Jack didn’t need to be told that she was in trouble. He swiftly supported her ankle so her leg did not drag on the bed and smoothly followed her movements as she turned herself with her arms and her good leg.

“There,” she said breathlessly when she was sitting on the side of the bed, one leg propped on the deck, the other still held out straight in front of her.  “That wasn’t so bad.”

“Of course not,” Jack said dryly. “That’s why we’re both sweatin’ like we just raced t’ the t’gallant yards. Now how are we goin’ to get this,” he nodded at her leg, “down there?” he jerked his chin towards the deck.

“Just let go?” Anamaria shrugged. “It won’t kill me.”

“No it won’t,” said Jack. “But you’ll be killing _me_ shortly after.” He grimaced. “I’m sure this is the lesser evil.” And he sank with determined grace to one knee, keeping his spine unbent, supporting her leg all the way down and then lowering it until her foot rested on the floor. It hurt like bloody blazes, and apparently not just for her.  As soon as Jack had removed his hand from her ankle, he told her in great and profane detail just exactly where she could insert her modesty and how far she could shove it, and how long she could leave it there.

Anamaria blinked.

When he’d finally wound down, he sighed. “There. That feels better.”

Anamaria laughed.

Jack glowered at her. “Anything else you need liftin’, up or down or sideways, I’m callin’ for help. Savvy? Tearlach’ll do fine.”

“Jack,” Anamaria protested weakly.

“No,” said Jack mulishly. “I’m pulling rank here.  He won’t say a word.  I promise.”

“Tearlach never says a word,” Anamaria said.

“Exactly.”

That had been the captain speaking. When matters reached that point, Anamaria knew argument was always futile.

Slowly and painfully, Jack got back to his feet. He grabbed the dress and held it out to her.

“Time to complete your toilette, my dear. It was quite the fashion for the gentlemen to assist the ladies with their gowns in the last generation.” He eyed the garment critically. “And, I would say  this is at least a generation out of mode.”

Anamaria scowled at the object he was offering.  “I can’t remember ever wearin’ a dress.”

“Not even when you were a little girl?” Jack asked as they sorted out the acres of fabric into sleeves and bodice and skirt.

“I was lucky to get my brothers’ cast-offs, and they were cut down from my father’s clothing when he wore it out. My family had no use for a girl, so I was just another one of the boys.” Anamaria hadn’t thought about that past in a long time. Suddenly she wondered about her family, what they were doing, if any of the boys had families of their own. Perhaps, someday, she would go home and see. If she lived.

“Well then, it’s about time you did wear a dress,” Jack said firmly.  “I’m sure you were an adorable little mucky-nosed ragamuffin, but you’ll make a much prettier lady. Now put your arms up so we can slip this over your head.”

Anamaria almost fell over when she tried. In the end she had to hold up one hand at a time as Jack worked the garment awkwardly over her shoulders, consigning all women’s fashions to the devil. However, finally the ordeal was over.

“Hmmm.” Jack eyed her consideringly, one hand full of fabric still resting at her waist. “You’re going to need some sort of easy way out of this.”

Anamaria, ensconced in a huge puddle of crimson about her hips, wriggled uncomfortably. Jack removed his hand as though he’d been burnt.

Frowning, he decided, “We’d better leave the top off. You just need the skirt. Help me lace this bodice up enough to keep it from falling off.”

Since Anamaria needed one hand to prop herself upright, they attempted to cooperate in a tangle of hands and laces. Finally Jack just held her up himself while she secured the skirt with a large, loopy bow.

“Now do you think you can stand up, lass?” Jack asked, looking doubtfully at her.

“Of course I can stand,” Anamaria said defensively.

“Ha!” said Jack skeptically. “Methinks the lady doth protest too much. But let’s see you give it a try.”

Anamaria discovered that sheer bloody-minded determination was not going to be sufficient. She was too wobbly to get up enough strength. When her head cleared, she discover Jack’s arm, elbow bent, hovering patiently in front of her nose.

“Get a hold on that, love,” he said. “You’ll pull better than you push.”

With his dogged assistance, Anamaria made it to a swaying upright position, the skirt falling down around her legs in heavy folds. She let go of Jack’s arm—and began to tip. Jack lunged to stop her downward progress.

“Steady as she goes. You’ve lost a bit too much blood and you’re running a fever.  I don’t want you collapsing on me.”

“’S there still a storm?” she asked.

“No. The storm’s been over for hours,” Jack assured her.

“Why’s the _Pearl_ swooping then?”

“She’s not, love. The _Pearl_ ’s just rocking nicely.  You’re the one that’s swooping.  Whoops!” He took a firmer grip on her arm. “Almost lost you there! Now lean back against the bed again.”

 “I feel very strange,” Anamaria said, when she was once more propped up by the edge of the bed.

“You look very strange, darling,” Jack agreed. “That shirt does not flatter that skirt.  I could help you take it off.  Dress you up proper,” he volunteered, forgetting himself for a moment.

“Jack Sparrow!”

“I know. I know, love,” Jack said apologetically. “It’s just me. You know I’m perfectly harmless.”

“The only time you were ever harmless,” Anamaria grumbled, “was before you were conceived. I bet you were a holy terror of a baby.”

Jack looked introspective. “I suppose I did break me mum’s ribs what with kickin’ before I was born.” He rubbed a thoughtful hand over the arm that braced his own broken ribs. “She never let me forget that.”

Anamaria held her breath wondering if he would continue.  Jack Sparrow never talked about his family or his past.  This was her first hint that he hadn’t just sprung from the sea, a captain astride the quarterdeck of his _Black Pearl_.  But the moment passed in silence.  Jack shook his head as though to clear it of some unsought picture.

“Now,” he asked, “Can you get out of . . . whatever it is you need to get out of . . . on your own?”

She almost smiled at his primness.  It was so very unlike Jack to mince his words.  His discomfort perversely made her feel more cheerful.

“I’ll be fine, Jack,” she insisted.  The vertigo was decreasing the longer she remained upright.

“You’re sure?” He raised an incredulous eyebrow. “Because so far your prophetic talents in that regard have been, shall we say, less than accurate.”

“I’m sure.” Anamaria nodded firmly, then regretted the motion. “I won’t even have to stand up.”

“That’s good. Because you can’t stand up. Bloody independent female!” Jack said under his breath as he turned to go.

After the captain had betaken himself off, Anamaria simply hitched the skirt back up to her waist, one-handed, and fumbled the ties of her breeches undone.  When she let the dress fall, she could keep holding her breeches up through the layers of cloth and let them drop when she was ready.  With some trepidation she called for Jack, knowing Tearlach would be accompanying him. 

However, Tearlach was too good-natured and dependable to leave her uneasy for long.  He picked her up like she was a poppet with hands that nearly spanned her waist, and as Jack arranged her skirt around the chair, the big man set her on her feet, or rather foot, again.

Gripping the edge of the table, Anamaria discovered with a sense of achievement, that she could stand on her own.

“There you are!” Jack said triumphantly. “It’s as good as a tent. No one will know what you’re up to under there. Tearlach if you would seat the lady?”

Anamaria let go of her breeches and felt them pool above the bandage on her leg. Then she was being lowered to perch precariously on what felt like the far too inadequately-sized chamber pot. Her knuckles went white on the table as she balanced.

“That’s going t’ be a really tough angle to hold yourself at, love.  You sure you want us to go?” Jack asked dubiously.

“I’ll manage,” she told him. “Go away.”

She felt the heavy clumsiness of her body returned to her own control as the two men stepped back from her.

“Just call when you’re ready for a lift,” Jack said as he and Tearlach headed for the door.

Unfortunately Jack was right about the angle.  She could feel the muscles in her good leg quivering and threatening to give out. And the chamber pot was not making a sturdy base at all. She could picture herself falling and everything else falling and the whole embarrassing mess becoming intolerable.

She must have made some sort of sound, for Jack was back at her side in an instant. “Go on, Tearlach,” he ordered. “I’ll join you in a moment.”

And then his arm was around her, taking the brunt of her weight even though she knew it had to be killing him.

“Anamaria,” he entreated through clenched teeth. “This isn’t going to work.  You can’t do this by yourself. I wish you could bring yourself to trust me.”

She shook her head in fierce denial, but he did not release her.

“In the past twenty-four hours,” he argued, “I’ve had your vomit spattered on my knuckles, I’ve finger-painted with your blood, and, on a much happier note, we shared a kiss that really qualifies as the highlight of an otherwise hellish day.  So what’s one more body fluid among mates, eh?”

A small laugh escaped her. When he put it that way . . .

“I’d do this for Gibbs,” Jack continued earnestly. “Hell, I’d even do this for Pintel.  You’re one of my crew, love.  Let me help you.”

Anamaria began to cave in, not the least because she really needed him.

“Please,” he said softly.

She couldn’t bring herself to answer, but she nodded against his coat.

“Good girl,” he murmured. “I swear I’ll close my eyes and ears and anything else you wish. You won’t even know I’m here.”

Somehow she doubted that. But somehow, he’d made it all right.

* * * * *

Anamaria decided that she could be going to her own hanging, but if she had an empty bladder it would be all she asked of life. For the first time in hours, she could relax. 

Jack, on the other hand, was breathing harshly in her ear. “Are you done, darlin’?” he said with teeth-gritting control.

“Yes,” she told him. “Thank . . .”

But Jack didn’t let her get the words out. “Tearlach!” he bellowed. “Get your arse in here and lend a hand, man! Now!”

As the big man’s arm took her weight off of Jack, the captain almost succeeded in squelching a relieved moan. She shouldn’t have been such a prude and put him through that, but she was so very grateful to him.

Carefully, the two men got her to her feet again without disturbing anything. Jack whisked the hem of her skirt over the chair and chamber pot while Tearlach kept her from wavering. Then the captain handed the pot to his crewman with the orders, “Remove this before someone knocks it over.”

Tearlach unquestioningly did as he was bid and emptied the contents out one of the cannon shot holes in the hull. 

“Well,” Jack shrugged. “I knew there had to be a good use for those.”

* * * * *

Leaving Anamaria, hanging on to the table with one hand, to shed her skirt, clean up, and reassume her ordinary clothing Jack followed Tearlach out the door.  He’d have been delighted to assist, but he supposed that was the problem. 

Jack let himself relax against the bulkhead and concentrated on ignoring the swordfight going on in his ribcage.  _Could_ one concentrate on ignoring with any degree of possibility?  For a few minutes the philosophical conundrum conjured up in his brain distracted him from the fact that all the combatants were losing.

It was good not to move, not to lift, scarcely to breathe for a brief moment—even if any decrease in momentum seemed to be threatening to tip him over into sleep.  He fervently hoped the men on the _Defender_ were not much more rested than his own battered crew, or a four to one advantage might still not be enough.

Tearlach lounged with tireless stoicism on the other side of the door, as silent and massive and unflappable as a mountain.  Somehow the presence of his giant crewmember always had a calming effect on Jack. 

The big man met his captain’s eyes and a smile crinkled the weather lines on his placid, pleasant face.  Sometimes Jack had to remind himself that this wordless colossus who took such care of his smaller mates was by no means a simpleton.  The wry good humour in that grin was as clear as speech.

Jack nodded and smiled back. “Women,” he agreed.  “Bless ‘em, they are complicated creatures. But I think we’re going to make it out of this alive, Mr. Tearlach.  I thank you for your assistance.”

At Anamaria’s summons, Jack peeked in the door to check for the clearness of the coast.

“Just you,” she mouthed at him.

So he gestured for Tearlach to await further orders.

Anamaria was standing in a sea of crimson fabric, with her weight supported on her good leg and one arm, her grimy, bloody breeches clasped tightly to her waist with her other hand. Jack spotted the difficulty immediately. It was not possible for a person to both hold up a pair of breeches and lace them with one hand. 

However, the look in her eyes warned him that retribution would be severe if he should make any comments of an off-colour nature. Biting his tongue, Jack also refrained from saying he was happy to oblige as he began with really quite admirable insouciance to truss his first mate back into her garments.  He had to admit that he’d gotten his hands on more of Anamaria today than he’d ever hoped to. His agile fingers handled the ties while the rest of his attention was busily admiring the curve of her hip and the feel of hard muscle under worn fabric.  Which was probably why she was so reluctant to accept his help.  He could sense unborn slaps seething about inside of her.

The sentiment that he’d rather be removing these than putting them on her nearly made it past his lips before his instinct for self-preservation caught up to his impulse for wagging his tongue and ran that by his conscious mind. Not good. Those kinds of things were better said to Anamaria from a distance with a day’s head start. 

But overall the day had been so very rotten that he allowed himself the indulgence of enjoying what pleasures he could in it.  He just wished he could remove, erase, annul, or in some way expunge everything that had assured Anamaria of nothing but misery.  Unfortunately, he was not the man whose touch could sweep away pain for her.  He could only cause her more discomfort.

Against his personal inclinations, he hurriedly finished the task and pulled his hands away. Then he called in Tearlach.

“Time to tuck you back in bed, love,” he said. “You’re looking about done in, quite awful actually.” She did. Hollow-eyed and grey-skinned and haggard.

“You’re such a flatterer, Jack Sparrow,” Anamaria managed to retort, but she was clearly wilting.

“The word you’re looking for is toad-eater,” Jack suggested helpfully. “I’m feeling the need to ingratiate myself with your royal person.” He turned to the patiently waiting giant. “Tearlach, my man. Scoop the lady up and put her back where we got her before she falls over.”

Tearlach did just that, whisking Anamaria efficiently back to the captain’s wreck of a bed and laying her down as if she were a puff of thistledown. 

“Now, love,” Jack said to his first mate, eyeing his crewman admiringly, “you really must admit that I could never have done that for you with even half the finesse. Not even if I were perfectly hale and sound.”

Anamaria nodded exhausted acknowledgment that Jack had been right to ask for help. “Thank you, Tearlach,” she said.

The crewman grinned at her, then tossed a salute at the captain as Jack waved him a dismissal.  “Get along with you now, Mister. I’m sure the boarding party can use your help.”

When he was alone with Anamaria, Jack wasted a little more time, lingering to make sure she had sufficient covers pulled up to her chin.  She looked up at him through half-mast eyelids. “Thank you, Jack,” she murmured. “I . . . just, thank you.”

“Feelin’ better, eh?” he squeezed her shoulder. “No trouble at all. You just rest now. I’ve got to run check on things, but I’ll drop by to look in on you in a bit.”

“I wish I could help,” she said wistfully.

“I wish you could too,” Jack agreed truthfully.  “We could use you out there. But we’ll contrive, love.”

Anamaria smiled, her eyes closed now. “You always do.”

* * * * *

TBC


	21. To Disguise Fair Nature with Hard-Favour'd Rage

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The arming of the warrior. Every epic needs one. Jack and Anamaria prepare for a fight.

The rising of the sun had done nothing to discourage the lowering clouds from a steady, persistent drizzle.  The gentle undulation of the ship and the whispered patter of rain on her decks would have been soothing under other circumstances.  However, the rough seas of fever kept alternately submerging Anamaria in struggling sleep and casting her, unrested, on the shores of consciousness. Pain broke her apart on the shoals, grinding her into fragments in the breakers of exhausted memory. 

Gathering the pieces of her disconnected mind, Anamaria fought her way once again to the surface of wakefulness, drawn by a scuffling sound in the cabin.

In the light filtering through rain and broken glass she could make out Jack Sparrow pawing through a chest in the corner. Some time since she’d last seen him, someone must have helped him out of his coat and vest and boots, because he was in his shirtsleeves and barefooted and obviously on the hunt for a change of clothes.  Already he had a growing pile of sartorial treasure around him.

“Goin’ courtin’, are you?” Anamaria asked, pleased that her voice came out as something more definitive than a croak.

Jack’s head appeared above the edge of the chest, grin sparkling. “Aye, love.  There’s a bonny wee brig just beggin’ for a pirate captain to have his way with her.  Wouldn’t want to disappoint the lass.”

Anamaria rolled her eyes. “And just how does your lovely _Pearl_ feel about that?”

Jack smirked. “She don’t blame the _Defender_ at all. Thinks she has rather good taste in men!” His mess of dark hair disappeared again. From the depths of the chest his voice echoed hollowly. “She knows she’s my one true love, so she don’t mind sharin’ the wealth.”  He popped up again clutching a pair of breeches. “’Sides, it wouldn’t seem respectful-like t’ commandeer a ship of the Fleet in all me dirt.  Got to observe decorum.  This ain’t just any plebian merchant vessel after all. This one is a real lady.”

“And you want to impress the hell out of them,” Anamaria said dryly.

“Can’t hurt, darlin’.” Jack nodded. “We’re not exactly holdin’ the upper hand here. Wouldn’t do to look too much like I’m already half-killed if I want those Navy boys shakin’ in their boots, eh?”

He pounced into the chest again. “There you are! I knew you were in here somewhere!” A problematically white shirt waved like a flag above the edge.

“You surrenderin’?” Anamaria laughed at him. It was good to see Jack back in spirits again, though where he’d found them was a mystery.

“Merely lookin’ t’ parley, ma’am,” Jack said, gathering his chosen effects and lurching to his feet with a pained huff. “Though if it’s surrender you want,” he leered at her, “just say the word.”

“If I were the _Pearl,_ ” Anamaria suggested pointedly, “I’d be hittin’ you upside the head with the spanker.”

“Why ever for, love?” Jack asked with wide-eyed bewilderment. “There’s plenty of me t’ go around.”

Anamaria snorted. “Unprincipled rake,” she accused.

With a superior look, Jack said, “Those that can, do!”

He laid the clean garments on the table next to a tin basin of salt water, fresh water still being severely rationed, although they had now realized some success in collecting rain as the weather calmed.

The front and sleeves of the shirt he was wearing were dyed a shocking crimson, still wet with rain but growing darker rust as the fabric dried against the heat of his body.  His forearms were red, and, although his hands were rain-washed, his nails were dark with old blood.

“Much as I hate t’ admit it, I might be in need of a bit of a bath.” Jack looked dubiously at what he could see of himself. “’Course a good swim’d take care of some of this blood, but not before it messed up me clean shirt.”

“And you reek like a pirate,” Anamaria observed, wrinkling her nose, although to be honest she was fairly sure she smelled just as bad. Rain and the wash of the sea only added a humid and salty pungency to the adamantly ground-in odour of dirt and tar and sweat and blood.

Jack preened. “Ain’t it grand, love?”

He made an abortive attempt to remove his stained shirt, then froze, breath hissing through his teeth.  “Damn it all to hell!  I bloody hate havin’ broken ribs!” He turned to Anamaria. “I don’t suppose you would be so kind?”

Since even she couldn’t argue with his reasons for luring her into undressing him yet again, Anamaria nodded shortly. 

Positioning himself beside her so that she could reach his shoulders without sitting up, Jack leaned forward and allowed her to gather up the fabric and work it over his tangle of hair.

Anamaria’s fingers felt like lumps of soggy salt horse, and she had to force herself to handle the gory material. Some of that was her blood, she knew, but the rest . . . there was so much of it.  It stained the bandage on his chest as well.

“Whose?” she asked as she drew the shirt down his arms.

Jack’s face shuttered instantly. “Number of people,” he said, his voice clipped and emotionless. “Diego’s mostly. He was too ripped up. I had to give him grace.”

Anamaria felt a sickness that had nothing to do with her swollen leg or the accompanying fever.  That Jack, of all people, should have been forced to do such a task—there would be ghosts perching on his shoulders the minute he had time to slow down enough to rest.  Her hands lingered of their own accord on the backs of his for an instant before she finished peeling the wet sleeves from them.

Jack shook his head, as though trying to clear it of some unsought vision. 

After that, both of them shied away from any mention of the past, tacitly coming to an accord. Some things were too raw to be spoken.

“You’ll have to replace that too,” Anamaria said, changing the subject, pointing to the soiled bandage.  “It’s as much a mess as your shirt.”

Jack just groaned a protest.

“None of that,” Anamaria told him sternly. “Help me untie it. Then, as soon as you’re clean, we’ll put it on again. 

The arch of bruises, revealed by the removal of the bandage, rioted in a rainbow of colour across his chest.  Anamaria cringed at the sight.

“Are you sure you can’t just let the men do this without you, Jack?” she asked, her hand tracing the marks without touching. “You’re not in any shape for a swim, much less a fight.”

“No, love,” Jack said decidedly. “It’ll require too much ticklish negotiation, since even in the best case we’ll have the brig’s crew hostage only at the expense of that Navy captain holding my crew over here hostage.  I’d rather not give him the leverage of having me captured as well.”  His eyes focused somewhere in the future, the frown creasing his brow into dark tracks of worry.  “Besides, I’m the one that has the right to say how much I’m willin’ to let this cost us if it comes to firing on the _Pearl_.  I don’t know if the men could do it, and I wouldn’t ask it of them.”

Anamaria wondered that Jack thought _he_ could do it.

“Just what kind of bumble-brained plan have you hatched up to get aboard that ship?” she asked as Jack stood up and stepped to the washbasin. “You can’t climb.”

“Oh, no worries,” Jack said lightly, pulling a small dagger from his belt and beginning to scrape away at the blood caked under his nails. “Tearlach’s got a rope and he’ll haul me on and off one way or another.”

Nothing Anamaria could envision about that combination seemed pain-free in any way.  But she imagined Jack knew that, so she didn’t bother to point out the obvious.  Nobody better at trying to kill himself than Captain Jack Sparrow, after all.  There was a reason the man was a legend.

Jack cursed perfunctorily as he tried to work up some kind of lather from the hard grey soap with the cold salt water. “Who makes this stuff?” he complained.  “We’ve got to waylay a few more French ships and try to get us something with some quality.” Finally he managed to create an unenthusiastic grey sludge.

Anamaria started not to watch as Jack scrubbed the rusty stains from his arms.  Then she decided they’d both had a rotten enough day and night, and harder was yet to come, for her to allow herself the indulgence of “enjoying the view”, as Jack would say, and him that of knowing he was admired.

There was nothing superfluous about him—no height, no mass of muscle or bone. Only the plain clean lines of a body deceptively slender, pared down to a fine edge of pure function. Anamaria knew she would never get enough of just looking at him, even though she seldom got the chance and even more seldom took it when she did.  But in the back of her mind hovered the shade of knowing her margin of chances was shrinking. Either one of them might not survive the coming conflict.

And so she let her eyes linger, a pirate gazing on treasure, on the light and shadow rippling across the movement of his back, the old silvery lines of scars lacing the gold skin. In the dim cabin, he was like bright metal on sullen ground. And she imagined how if this were another time and place, and they were two completely different people, what it would feel like to trace reverent fingertips over those lines and feel the soft skin shiver under her hands.

Jack flinched and swore under his breath at his own touch as he swabbed at the blood that had seeped through his clothing onto his chest. But finally he was satisfied that the task was complete, and he wrung out the cloth in the water now gone murky.

Then he started to remove his breeches.

Anamaria squeaked in startled indignation. “Jack Sparrow! What do you think you’re doing?”

Jack looked at her with puzzlement and a devious glint. “A bright girl like you should be able to figure it out. These breeches are a disaster!” He gestured to his bloodstained thighs. “I’m changin’, love.  You’re in my cabin.  You don’t want to watch? Close your eyes.”

Since he didn’t stop, Anamaria frantically slammed her eyelids down.

She could hear the unshed laughter thick in Jack’s voice. “Though if you’d like to peek, I promise to make it worth your while.”

“Oh, you wretch!” Anamaria wished she had something to throw at him. She could hit him with her eyes closed. Usually. At least when her head was working. How dare he ignore the unwritten rule that men on a ship with a woman aboard did not undress where she might see them? It was a matter of respect. It was a matter of the survival of her own control as well as theirs. How dare he tempt her like that?

But she resisted temptation, not opening her eyes until the shuffling and pained breathing told her that Jack was donning his clean garments. “All clear, love,” he assured her. “You can look, now. Nothin’ showin’ anymore to scare an innocent lass.”  He paused thoughtfully. “Nothin’ to scare _you_ , either,” he finished with a smirk.

Anamaria glared at him. “I wouldn’t want to embarrass you with odious comparisons,” she said, as haughty as any society miss.

“I’ve had no complaints,” Jack said loftily, fishing his shirt and vest out of the clean pile. Then he added the leather splint and more bandaging

“Silver will buy anything, won’t it?” Anamaria said, commiserating.

Jack raised an eyebrow and shot her a look that did disturbing things to her stomach. “Just how much silver are you askin’, darlin’?”

“Bastard!” Anamaria spat at him. Really, no man had ever possessed the talent to make her as furious as Jack Sparrow did, the silver-tongued villain.

“So, there are some things it won’t buy, eh?” Jack shrugged. “Just checkin’.”  He held up his shirt with a pleased chuckle.  “Look! Buttons!” he said with satisfaction. “Much easier t’ get in and out of.”

And just that swiftly he was on another tack. Anamaria regularly sprained her brain trying to keep track of him.

The captain eyed her warily, then looked at the articles in his hands. “Is it safe to ask you to help me put these on?” he asked.

“No,” Anamaria retorted.

“Oh good,” said Jack.  “I seem to be developing a taste for life-threatening adventures.”  He sauntered over to her, alighted on the edge of the bed, his hip brushing hers, and dumped the entire pile in her arms. 

She couldn’t stay mad at him when he was this close to her, smelling clean for once—a mixture of lye and linen and faint camphor and tar, mixed with the eternal salt of the sea that permeated everything aboard ship. Heaving a resigned sigh, she dragged a wad of padding from the pile.

Between the two of them, the captain was re-splinted and wrapped, clad again in a shirt with pretensions to whiteness, and inserted into one of his faded vests. 

There was something that eased the storm-snapping tension in this calm, silent working together, Jack supplying any needed grip, Anamaria providing the range of motion he lacked. In the middle of the bloodstained and shattered splendour of the cabin on the crippled and sinking ship, something was being restored.

When they had finished, Jack rose reluctantly, tied on a clean sash and cinched it with his two grimy leather belts that jangled with his collection of odd tools and mementos. Then he retrieved his boots from where he’d left them by the door.

“You might need help with those,” Anamaria suggested.

But Jack sat down and proceeded to work his feet into the soft leather, turning the air of the cabin a pale indigo but finally succeeding.

“No I don’t,” he said triumphantly.

“Stubborn, mad-headed ape!” Anamaria said fondly.

“Spleenish weasel!” Jack retorted with a grin. He got to his feet, arms outstretched, and pirouetted. “How do I look, darlin’? Like a villain and the veriest son of darkness?”

Anamaria scrutinized him.  “Your clothes look as fine as fivepence,” she decided, “but you need some work.”

“What?” Jack tried to scan himself.

“Your face,” Anamaria snickered. “You look like a . . . like a . . .”  Words failed her and she wave her hands helplessly. “You look a right mess, Jack Sparrow.”

Jack’s eyes crossed as he attempted to observe his own nose. With a thwarted grunt, he gave up and glared around his cabin.  “Now where’d that mirror get to?” he asked, since it was not on the washstand where it had been. 

Wordlessly, Anamaria pointed to the debris by the port bulkhead. The mirror was definitely scuppered.

With a disgusted curl of his lip, Jack searched futilely through the fragments for one large enough still to serve. 

“Seven years bad luck, that is,” Anamaria warned.

“We didn’t break it, so it’s their bad luck,” Jack said firmly. “Ow! Blast!” He sucked at the small cuts on two fingers. “So much for that idea.  I’ll just have to remember where me face was.” 

He did try. But since he couldn’t see what he was doing, the results were not remarkable for their success.

Anamaria eyed him critically. “There’s still a big smudge under your starboard eye.  And a bigger blotch on your port cheek. And up on your forehead, and on your neck.  Oh, get over here y’ lunatic peacock, an’ let me get that.”

“Thought you’d never ask, darlin’,” Jack said with his most annoying smirk. 

Ignoring his antics, she beckoned him over. 

Jack pouted rather unconvincingly, but he sat down beside her again, positioning the water on the bed next to her.

With stiffened fingers, Anamaria tried to wring out the cloth.  After her second fumble, Jack wordlessly took it back, wrung it out and handed it to her. “Takes two of us, don’t it, love?”

Carefully, Anamaria cleaned the swollen area around the gash on Jack’s head, working the matted blood out of his dark locks.  She could feel Jack tense as she neared the wound and hear the slight quickening of his breath, but he didn’t make any other sound.  As she dabbed away the rivulets that had run down the side of his face and neck, he relaxed a little. The blood came off easily enough with the cold water.

The grey and black traces of kohl took a little more work to remove.  She scrubbed at them with the unenthusiastic soap until Jack’s skin was red.  This he did complain about.  “’M not a bloody washboard, wench.” He ducked out of her reach.

“Stop squirming,” Anamaria ordered smugly, returning his head, with a smart tug on a lock of his hair, back to where she could resume her chore.

“You’re just gettin’ revenge,” Jack grumbled.  “I think I’m clean enough.”

“Stop behavin’ like a little boy gettin’ his ears washed, Jack Sparrow,” Anamaria scolded. “You’re worse than Jip.”  Her voice fell away suddenly, and she bit her lip, the memory all the more painful for having been so briefly forgotten.

“I keep expectin’ him to come boundin’ ‘round a corner,” Jack said softly, eyes cast down to where his hands played restlessly with the frayed end of his sash. “I look up. And he doesn’t.”

Anamaria felt her eyes sting.  Fiercely, she rinsed out the cloth in the basin, and this time she wrung it out without Jack’s assistance.  When he simply endured the rest of her ministrations without protest, she wanted to hit something. 

“If those whoreson bastards board this ship, I will kill them,” she said with hoarse conviction, twisting the cloth one last time as though she had a Naval neck between her hands.

“I’m hoping no one will get killed this time,” Jack said.  “Us or them.  I’ve told the men I expect them to offer our enemies mercy if it is within their power to do so.”

“You are impossible, Jack Sparrow!” Anamaria exclaimed angrily. “I don’t understand you at all.”

“These aren’t the men who shot Jip,” Jack said gently.

“No.” Anamaria could hear a wild edge to her voice. “They’re the men who shot you! And Matelot, and Diego and all those others.”

“I know.” He looked down at his hands, spreading the fingers, rotating his wrists as though seeing again the blood he’d washed off them and scraped out from under his nails.

“Jack, you bloody well know they’d not do the same for us!” Her voice tangled harshly with choking cords of emotion.

“Oh, aye,” Jack said mildly. “They’d like to hang the lot of us and nail my head to their bowsprit, I’ve no doubt.”

“Then why . . .?” she began plaintively.

Jack met her eyes, absolutely serious now. “Ana, you know why.  Those men are doing what’s right by them—obeying their orders and doing their duty.  I’ll not murder a man for that.”

Anamaria had always known that she would never understand Jack Sparrow, but she had underestimated the magnitude of that incomprehension.  When a man trespassed upon whatever code of honour he himself professed, Jack could be as implacable as the sea in his vengeance. But give the captain an honourable foe, and the daft fool would tie himself in bowline knots trying to grant quarter.  At times like this, that sodden-witted chivalry of his terrified Anamaria.

He sat there, head cocked, eyes bright and quizzical now in his freshly scoured face, looking like a boy dressed up as a pirate.

“Your kohl,” Anamaria said suddenly. “You forgot that.”  For some reason it was now imperative that he not look small and vulnerable and human. She needed him behind the mask of the legend—enigmatic and frighteningly lucky and nigh uncatchable.

“Oh yes,” Jack agreed. “Wouldn’t do to be unrecognizable, now would it?  They’ll need to know whose name to put in the stories.”  He got to his feet, emptied the grimy, bloody water out the cannon hole and tossed the basin with a clang onto the heap on the port bulkhead. “Now where did I put that?”

A short, noisy quest through the drawers of the washstand turned up the small, flat-bottomed pot with its wide, tiny rim and flat, disk-shaped lid, the jar of olive oil, and the finger-length stick with its rounded ends. Jack glanced first at the items in his hand and then at the mirror fragments.

“Alas, love,” he sighed. “I’m going to have to presume upon your good nature. Have you any good nature?” he asked puzzled. “Never mind. I’ll loan you some.”

As Jack settled himself beside her yet again, Anamaria considered retribution for his comment, but decided that would merely prove his claim. She settled for pointing out, “I’d be careful how I insulted the person who was about to be poking a stick in _my_ eye, if I were you.”

The captain raised an eyebrow at her. “I’m really almost entirely certain that other captains don’t have to put up with this kind of insubordination in their first officers.” He looked thoughtful. “On the other hand, their officers are really much uglier, so I don’t think I’ll trade.”

“Jack!” Anamaria warned.

“Right,” Jack agreed to himself. “Don’t provoke her into anything rash that we’ll both regret.”

He removed the lid of the jar and set it on his leg; then he unstoppered the bottle, immersed the stick into the oil, wiped it off on a relatively unscathed bit of sheet, and dipped it into the dark powder.

“Here.” He handed Anamaria the tiny stick.

She smelled the odour of burnt almonds and copper and frankincense. 

“Now,” he instructed. “Hold the stick horizontal and put the front end of it on my eye. Start at the inside corner, and move it outwards. Slowly, mind. Keep it between my lids right on the eye.”

Anamaria eyed the object doubtfully. “You want me to stick this in your eye?” she asked incredulously. “As in touching?”

“Yep,” Jack grinned.

“Are you mad?” she yelped. “Never mind. I know the answer to that one. But Jack, I can’t! My hands aren’t the steadiest right now.”

“You’ll do fine, love,” Jack soothed. “I promise to squawk if you do anything dreadful.”

He leaned towards her. He really wanted her to do this. Anamaria would rather have gone another round with the chamber pot. With great trepidation, she took hold of his face in one hand and brought the stick to the corner of his left eye with the other. Then she stopped, unable to bring herself to actually do it.

“Go on,” Jack encouraged. “I’m quite enjoying myself.”

“You scurvy ass,” Anamaria snapped, and set the tip to Jack’s eye. When he didn’t scream or go blind or hit her, she drew courage and began to trace the curvature of his eye with the dark substance, watching it cling to Jack’s lashes as it passed.  To her surprise, she completed the task without incident.  Withdrawing the stick, she watched as he blinked several times in rapid succession to clear the dark powder from his eye. He looked lopsided now, with one darker eye.

“Couldn’t have done it better myself,” Jack said, with what sounded suspiciously like relief. “Onward, me hearty. I’ve got one more eye.”

“Not after I’m done,” Anamaria groused. But she turned his face to the correct angle and began on his right eye with much less hesitation. 

Finishing, she removed the stick and dropped both hands from Jack’s face. He didn’t look damaged. Except for the blinking, he didn’t even look uncomfortable. Anamaria sighed with relief.

“Don’t get comfortable, darlin’” Jack warned. “You’ll need to clean off whatever powder floats to the corners of my eyes and then do the outlining.” He handed her a cloth.

Carefully, Anamaria dabbed at the black clumps in Jack’s eyes. “Is this really worth it?” she asked.

“Keeps down the sun’s glare, and they swear it guards against eye infections.” Jack shrugged. “And you have to admit, it’s rather striking.”

Anamaria did know that, but she didn’t have to admit anything.  “Close your eyes, you vain thing,” she ordered. Reapplying kohl to the stick, she began to gently define the contours of his eyelids with with the dark powder.  This was much less nerve-wracking business, and she had time to notice the sheer elegance of the man whose face she was handling.

How had this peacocky, two-thirds mad, annoying pirate managed to become so necessary for her peace of mind? And now he was off to risk all that was mortal and unsure on the thread-thin chance that he could save his ship and a few of his crew. 

Her hands, freed from their task with the kohl at last, unconsciously traced the fine lines of his cheeks as though she were memorizing him with her finger tips.

Jack’s eyes flew open.  Their faces were so close she could feel his breath on hers.  Like candles in the night, his eyes glowed more fiercely framed with the dark shadows.

Unguarded for an instant, Anamaria whispered, “You’re beautiful.”  Then she flushed hot and embarassed, biting her tongue and mentally cursing herself for stupidly letting that come out aloud. It must have been the fever.

But Jack made no snide riposte nor took any lewd advantage. His rare, slow, pleased smile lilted the corners of his lips, and his teeth glinted briefly like sun behind clouds. He lifted one hand and drew a fingertip along the curve of her jaw.

“We’ll make it through this, love,” he said softly. “I promise.”

* * * * *

Although Anamaria couldn’t comprehend it, Jack Sparrow had ordered mercy for the crew of the _Defender._ Which was why she was surprised when he came in from the final preparations, soaking wet again, shaking rain like diamond drops from his face and hair, to give her the knives.  They were long heavy knives, beautifully balanced for close and dirty fighting or for throwing.

“Haven’t had much call for these,” he mused, drawing one from its scabbard and watching the play of candlelight on its blade. “But these are works of art.”   He handed her the naked blade, hilt first.

Works of art, indeed. Anamaria had always been attracted to knives, daggers, the lesser blades.  They suited her smaller build, were easier to conceal than a cutlass, and they were her weapon of choice in a fight.  But she’d never held a blade like this one.  Wonderingly she ran a reverent finger along the silken folded steel. Hefting the knife, she swung it slicing through the air.  Almost, she heard it sing.

“Pretty, innit?” Jack said, clearly satisfied at her reaction.

Anamaria looked up at him bewildered. “Yes, but why?”

Jack was silent for a space, drawing the other knife, and staring at it pensively.  Then he looked up at her again.  “Because I’m leavin’ this ship and allowin’ her to be boarded by men who may or may not be honourable.  Because you’re goin’ t’ be a lot outnumbered in here, and you can’t walk.  I don’t want you to have no way to defend yourself, Ana.”

Touched, but still confused, Anamaria pointed out, “Two knives ain’t goin’ t’ make much of a difference in the end if it comes to fightin’. Those marines’ll take us down.”

 “Aye, I know,” Jack said.  “But they’ll make a difference to you.”

Anamaria realized that he was right.  Already, with that knife in her hand, she felt better about the oncoming confrontation.  She might still die, but she wouldn’t die helpless. And she wouldn’t die alone. She’d be sure of that. The smile she turned on Jack had more than a hint of canine teeth in it.

 “You’ll need to hide these. Their only use is as a surprise,” Jack said. “It’s a good thing this bed is already scuppered.”

 Together he and Anamaria worked out the swiftest angle for her to draw the blades, one for each hand.  Then Jack maneuvered them through the bedding and into the mattress.  “No one’ll notice these in this mess,” he decided, wrinkling up the coverlet under which the hilts rested.

“Remember, love. As little bloodshed as possible. We can’t win this if it turns into a fight.  Even if we succeed in commandeerin’ that brig’s firepower, there’ll only be different levels of losin’ if there’s fightin’ on the _Pearl._ ”

Anamaria shivered at the thought of Jack having to give the orders to fire on his own ship.  “Right,” she agreed. “No surrender; no fightin’. I think I can manage t’ keep that straight.”

She watched as Jack settled his sword at his right hip. The effect was strangely unsettling, as though he were a different person.  Then he shoved two pistols into his belt.  At her raised eyebrow, he commented, “They won’t work, but it’s the thought that counts.”

Not for the first time, Anamaria wondered how much of Jack Sparrow was put on for show. 

Curious, she tried imagining what the _Defender_ ’s captain would see when he looked at the pirate captain.  Jack had so many masks he wore, so many varied roles he played, but he was submerging into that rare manifestation when he was at his most dangerous.  Gone was any acknowledgement of those broken ribs. He might not be moving with the feline grace he exhibited when uninjured, but there was still that taut bowstring tension to him, that sense of coiled potential violence, that iron-hard implacable strength.

As he raised his well-worn blade in his left hand, he quoted soberly, “Here draw I a sword, whose temper I intend to stain with the best blood that I can meet withal in the adventure of this perilous day.”

Somehow the grand words suited him in this moment, even though his mouth twisted with distaste after he had said them. 

“Somehow, I doubt the Navy is going to appreciate that sentiment,” he said sourly, “or stand around to admire the gesture.”

Then, although Jack hadn’t seemed to move, his blade sliced the air in the beginnings of a shadow dance against an invisible opponent. Lunge, parry, riposte—thought becoming action like the flare of a shot. As he tested the less familiar reach of his left arm, he was a picture of perilous, swift motion. 

The wild savagery of his wet hair, jangling with bizarre curios, flung about his head, interwoven with the twisting blood-dark strands of his scarf, as he feinted with the deadly blade.  The rain-wet white fabric of his sleeve clung to the curve and flex of muscle in his arm, the shadows of tattoos showing like dim dark ghosts.  He would not be wearing his heavy coat nor the hat because of the swim, so he was entirely sleek lines and sharp edges, slender and lethal like the sword he wielded.

In his darkly-outlined eyes, the light of humour had leached away, the softness of compassion had frozen solid, and all was deep, midnight storm struck through with flashes of lightning. 

He was, she thought wonderingly, frightening and magnificent, barbarically splendid and completely the captain of the _Black Pearl_ , the most fearsome pirate ship in the Caribbean. 

This was not the face of the man who had ordered his men to show mercy. This was the face of the man who had given a gift of knives. 

She considered that gift— how she could kill two men, if she threw them, but then she would no longer be armed. Or if she wished to hold on to a weapon, how a man would have to choose to come close enough for her to strike a killing blow, though why any one would do such a thing, she couldn’t . . . oh.  Anamaria felt the skitter of claws up her spine and her pulse went from a pace to a gallop. _That_ was why Jack wanted her to have concealed knives.  She reached into the folds of fabric to feel the comforting weight of the hilts.

The captain was sliding his sword back into its scabbard with a ringing slice of steel.  She could see that he was already out on the deck with his men, already striking out on that hazardous swim, already waging that desperate, last-ditch attack on the _Defender._ He was scarcely with her at all by now.  But she wanted to tell him one thing before he was gone.

“Thank you,” Anamaria said quietly, as Captain Sparrow headed for the door. 

He looked back, and for a minute he was just Jack again, tossing her a last word with a smirk. “Some men give their womenfolk diamonds. I give her knives and say go get your own diamonds, love.”

And then, like a flicker of shadow, he slipped out the door.  Anamaria watched the spot where he’d vanished for a long time.  Perhaps it really was true that on sheer force of personality alone Jack Sparrow could talk a man who held all the cards into surrendering the game.

* * * * *

TBC


	22. Bloody but Unbowed

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> On board the Dauntless the hunt continues and a surgery takes place. Not for the faint of heart or stomach. Nota bene: The failure to utilize opiates is historically accurate for this time period.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNING: Primitive medical procedures described in detail.

Under Gillette’s capable command the Dauntless was making good time in her rather aimless search for the Black Pearl, her sails bellying in the wind, spray flinging from her cutwaters to join with the steady rain. Samuels’ assistant, Bailey, deferentially ushered the two conscripted officers into the surgery. Commodore Norrington saw Lieutenant Groves freeze for a moment as his vision adjusted to the interior lighting sufficiently to show him their small victim. When last the lieutenant had set eyes upon Jip, he’d been as lively as a cricket, sputtering and threatening like a hand grenade on the decks of the Dauntless in spite of his injuries, tying the smooth lines of activity on a king’s ship into knots of confusion all by his pint-sized, piratey self. Now he lay motionless in the swaying hammock, eyes half-lidded and barely tracking the swirl of medical motion that eddied about him, his face ashen, his breath no longer spitting defiance but rasping quick and shallow.

It had been less than twenty minutes since the commodore had last seen the boy and already the margins of the mortified flesh surrounding the wound had expanded noticeably, dusky and livid. The characteristic foul-smelling, rusty ichor drained from the swollen and blistered tissue.

Groves looked stricken. “Poor little chap,” he exclaimed softly. “What have we done to you?”

The eyelids snapped fully open, and blue lightning flashed. “I am not a poor little chap, you damned Navy bag-pudding!” Jip objected strenuously.

“Watch yourselves, gentlemen,” the doctor laughed. “He may be indisposed, but this young devil can still bite your fingers off at the elbow if you run afoul of his mouth.”

“Ungrateful brat!” Groves decided, grinning. 

Jip subsided, apparently appeased by the uncomplimentary epithet.

“That officer to whom you were so very polite,” the doctor said pointedly to his patient, “is Lieutenant Groves, who has kindly consented to assist me in saving your wretched life. So you might do well to treat him as a fairly mild form of enemy rather than as the arch-fiend of darkness.”

The lieutenant stepped to Jip’s side and held out his hand. “I’m always happy to meet a member of Captain Sparrow’s crew,” he said sincerely. “Best pirate and navigator I’ve ever seen. If I promise that not one word of sympathy will pass my lips, can we have a truce?”

Jip’s eyes were the only alive-looking feature about him as they studied the young officer warily. Norrington realized that his lieutenant was being weighed in some critical balance in that busy, feverish little head. 

“Did you really meet Captain Sparrow?” the boy asked finally. 

“Gave him grog and salt horse with these two very hands after he piloted us to the Isla de Muerta,” Groves said holding up the hands in question. “Didn’t wash for a month!”

“That was a whisker.” Jip decided, scenting the lie. 

“A regular bouncer,” the lieutenant agreed, shrugging. “I ran to the doctor for a flea dip the instant I left his company.”

Jip giggled. “I have fleas,” he offered.

Groves pulled a disgusted face. “I’m not surprised. The moment I saw you, I felt quite sure of it.”

Samuels, watching the boyish young man charm his suffering patient, growled for the commodore’s ear only, “That was one of your better ideas if I do say so myself, James, my lad.”

Norrington nodded. “That those two would get along famously was a foregone conclusion,” he said. 

The boy was holding out his hand now. “Truce,” he agreed.

Groves looked at the grubby little fingers then at his own hand. Turning to Samuels he asked, “Have you any treatment for fleas about?”

“I keep a vat of vinegar just for you, Theodore,” the doctor replied. “No woman in port will come near you for a month.”

“Very well,” Groves sighed. “I think I can risk it.”

“If we’re very fast, perhaps they won’t jump across,” Jip said mischievously.

Their hands met in a quick clasp, and Groves snatched his away as though in terror of a mass flea migration. Carefully he scrutinized every surface of his hand. Looking up at Jip who was still giggling like a teakettle on the boil, he frowned. “I do believe I’ve escaped contamination. But if I am bitten by a flea tonight, I shall know whom to blame and my retribution will be extreme.”

“Children,” said the doctor patiently. “While I do hate to interrupt such a heartwarming exchange of vermin, I am afraid we have work to do. That leg is not improving while we speak.”

The tone of the room sobered. Life and death had entered the lists in this gently rocking chamber out on the high seas. 

“Commodore, Lieutenant, if you could carry the boy to the table?” Samuels suggested, gesturing with the sharp knife that he then laid down next to the rest of his tools.

As the two men detached the hammock, Norrington reflected that the child in it scarcely weighed anything at all. Once again he wished this fragment of humanity had not been caught up in their grinding mill of law and lawlessness. Carefully, trying not to hurt him further, they set him on the unyielding wooden surface, but even such a light jar wrenched Jip’s face and wrung a hiss from his clenched teeth.

“Sorry,” Groves muttered.

They stood back as Samuels and Bailey positioned the boy on the table. Then the assistant busied himself with pouring sand on the decking under the injured leg. It would soak up the blood and make the deck less slippery and easier to clean.

“Do you understand what I am about to do?” Samuels asked gently, meeting Jip’s gaze.

Jip nodded and bit his lip. “You’re going to cut off my leg,” he said very quietly. “I’ve seen it done before. Three times.” Large, fevered eyes searched Samuels’ face. “They all died,” the boy added in a small voice.

Norrington felt his stomach twist. Jip was correct. If the amputation itself was not fatal, the subsequent inflammation usually was. However, the boy was dying now. The doctor really had no other option. The operation would give the child a small chance of surviving.

But Samuels spoke reassuringly. “They were all older sailors, weren’t they?” he asked. “Drank hard, wenched hard and lived hard, right?”

“Yes,” Jip said. “They always said Hugh was going to pickle himself with rum.”

“Then you need not worry.” The doctor smiled. “As long as you’ve not been drinking and whoring and carousing much lately?”

Groves snorted and Jip gave a shaky laugh and shook his head. “Captain Sparrow won’t let me. He says it’s a good way to end up with an empty head and an even emptier purse.”

“It sounds like your captain is a wise man,” Samuels approved.

“No,” Jip said firmly. “Just a very bad example, Anamaria says.”

“Who is Anamaria?” Norrington asked curiously.

The little pirate’s eyes went suspicious and his lips clammed shut. 

Out of the boy’s sight, Samuels made tongue-amputating motions with his fingers and mouth and glared at the commodore. Then he glided smoothly into the awkward silence. “There, I told you you had no cause for concern.” He squeezed his patient’s shoulder comfortingly. “You’re young and strong and healthy except for this leg. And we don’t have to take much off. You’ll be fine.”

No doubt lurked in Samuel’s voice or in his open countenance. Norrington wondered if the doctor really believed what he was saying or if he had merely mastered the art of the charitable lie.

In the interests of bolstering the doctor’s reputation, Norrington added, “You could not be in better hands, Jip. Doctor Samuels is the man I would want to take off my leg if it had to be done.”

“Such an encomium, James!” the doctor said dryly. “It quite unmans me.”

Norrington smirked humourlessly at his old friend. A thought occurred to him. “Have you given the boy rum?” he asked.

Samuels raised an eyebrow. “Treating him like an officer, are you?”

“Doctor,” said Norrington. “He is a child.” 

“I know that,” Samuels said. “I’m glad to see you do, too. Of course I’ve given him rum. And I’ll be giving him some more. Bailey?”

Taking the bottle from his stocky, mahogany-skinned assistant, the doctor propped Jip’s shoulders up with a strong arm. “Here you go, lad. Bottoms up. We want you thoroughly foxed before this little procedure. Rip roaring drunk, in fact.”

Jip eyed the bottle suspiciously. “Will that make my head empty?”

“I certainly hope so,” Samuels said with hearty cheer that sounded a bit forced to Norrington. “You can worry about getting sober after this is over.”

“But I want to watch what you’re doing,” Jip decided. 

Norrington and Groves exchanged incredulous glances. Samuels looked stunned for a moment. 

“Son,” the doctor said kindly, “you don’t know what you’re asking. Trust me. You really want to be as close to unconscious as possible for this.”

“I want to see,” the boy insisted stubbornly.

“You don’t understand,” Samuels explained less patiently. “This is not going to hurt just a little bit. This is going to hurt like the bloody blazes.”

“Already hurts like hell,” Jip said with pig-headed determination worthy of his mentor.

“Obstinate whelp,” Groves put in.

“Now why do you want to do such a chuckle-headed thing?” the doctor asked.

“Because I’m int’rested,” Jip explained, attempting to raise his head to look at the mangle of his lower leg.

“He’s got you there, Gil,” Norrington laughed. “How can you resist the entreaty of such a budding scientist? It would be professional discourtesy!”

“Fever’s sent him round the bend, that’s my diagnosis,” the doctor groused. “All right you damned young paperskull. You empty this bottle to here,” he indicated a mark on the bottle several inches down that would assure that Jip had consumed enough rum to float a small armada, “and I’ll get these fine gentlemen to prop you up so that you can watch this operation for as long as you have the intestinal fortitude to do so.”

At Jip’s confused expression, Groves interpreted, “Guts, he means as long as you have the guts to watch.”

“I have lots of guts,” Jip said.

“More bottom than sense, that’s what you have.” Groves shook his head at their patient. “Most of us have guts, but we prefer not to see ‘em.”

Jip gave him a pitying look. “How do you find out anything?” he asked.

“We look at other people’s guts,” Samuels cut in acerbically. “Now drink your rum like a good pirate.”

In short order Jip was ensconced in a semi-upright position on a pile of canvas shreds that were well on their way to becoming baggywrinkles. His eyes, hazed with rum and fever, followed the actions of his four attendants with determined concentration. Occasionally he would hiccough gently. 

Samuels directed Norrington and Groves to either side of the table and indicated that they should take hold of the boy’s arms and legs. The two officers shed their coats, rolled up their sleeves and did as they were bid. As the commodore closed his hands around the fragile-seeming limbs, it struck him again how very young their patient was. His fingers could nearly wrap twice around the slender wrist. The boy’s pulse fluttered like a trapped wild thing against his hand and the skin was disturbingly hot to the touch.

When the doctor took up a leather strap with a buckle on the end, Jip asked, “What’s that for?”

“This,” said Samuels, “is called a tourniquet. I’m going to place this just above your knee and draw it tight.” He suited his actions to his words. “This will pinch off the arteries and veins in your leg so that you don’t bleed to death when I cut into them. Those are the tunnels the blood travels in.” As he buckled the device, he pointed out the increased flush of colour on the boy’s thigh. “See. All the blood will stay there until we’re ready for it again.”

“Now,” Samuels instructed Bailey, “get the lad the stick to gnaw on.”

His assistant turned to pick up the object when Groves interrupted. “Wait,” the lieutenant said. “I forgot something.” Leaving Jip unrestrained for a moment, he fished about in the deep pocket of his coat. “Here it is!” he exclaimed triumphantly. “One of the midshipmen whittled this for you, Jip.” He held up a clean white length of wood. 

“That is what I call a thoughtful gift,” Norrington grinned. “What do you think, Jip? Now you won’t have to chew on Navy spittle.”

“Do I have to?” Jip eyed the gag with distaste. 

“Much as I hate to say this,” the doctor teased, “you really don’t want to chew off your tongue. Not that the quality of language wouldn’t improve around here if you did, but I took an oath. So open wide and bite, young man.”

Jip seemed more disturbed by his inability to talk than he was by the impending surgery. “You’ll tell me everything?” he insisted. “I can’t ask, but I want to know.”

“I’ll explain everything I’m doing,” Samuels reassured him. “I promise.” 

As soon as Jip had the gag situated, the doctor held out his palm and Bailey handed him the knife. “First, I’m going to have to cut through the flesh down to the bone,” he told the boy, with clinical detachment that Norrington could only admire. “I’ll be amputating about four inches below your knee in order to be sure of removing all the dead tissue so it can’t poison you more. Fortunately you’ll keep the joint. It’s all right if you want to yell. Sometimes making a lot of noise helps you bear it.”

At the first bite of the knife, Norrington felt the small arm and leg go rigid under his grip. He tensed for a struggle, but although the child cried out, he did not fight the restraint and his eyes opened again almost immediately to watch in fascination as the crimson blood welled against his pale skin.

Samuels worked with his usual swift sureness, making the incision through the muscle, down to bone, first from above, then from below, leaving a flap of skin on the inside of the boy’s leg. “That’s to cover the stump when I close you back up,” he informed Jip. 

The instant the last bit of flesh parted, Bailey offered a selection of crooked needles to the surgeon. “I’m using these to tack the severed arteries away from the area I’m going to be working,” the doctor continued, accomplishing this feat with lightning speed. “Retractor,” he said to his assistant. Slipping the leather cuff around the incision, Samuels explained, “This will fit over the bone and pull back the muscle so I have room to saw.” 

Norrington glanced away. He could feel the corners of his mouth twisting in a sympathetic grimace. There was something too disturbing in such a violation of a body, no matter how many times he witnessed it, even though he knew that the intent was to heal rather than to harm.

Jip’s shivering flesh felt cold and damp now, like the spokes of a ship’s wheel in a storm. His face had lost all colour so that the dense black lashes that bunched against his cheeks when the pain grew too unbearable stood out with the contrast of soot on snow. His breath rattled around the wooden gag in gasps that held overtones of whimpers. And yet the child refused to look away from the doctor’s work for long. Lieutenant Groves, the commodore noted, had shifted from holding the boy’s arm to letting Jip clutch his hand. The lieutenant met his commanding officer’s eyes and pulled a wry face. Nodding to where the small tendons and knuckles strained claw-like as they crushed his fingers, Groves murmured under his breath, “He’s stronger than he looks. The doc is going to have me as his next patient!” 

When an adequate section of bone lay revealed, Samuels selected a light saw. “You’ve such bird bones, young rascal, that there’s no need for the large saw I use on the legs of great hulking men like the commodore there. Don’t worry. I’m very fast at this.”

The forty seconds it took the doctor to saw through the tibia and fibula seemed to take hours, the sound grating harshly against nerves. Finally, however, the deadened and toxic limb was completely separated. Samuels let it drop, unnoticed to the blood-stained floor, making a dull thunk. With a flick of his wrist, he released the retractor and allowed the muscle to surround the bared bones.

“All done,” he informed Jip. “That shouldn’t be bothering you any more. Now I’ll just be applying ligatures to those divided arteries and veins so you don’t lose too much blood when I remove the tourniquet.” He showed the boy the thread. “Finest silk,” he said impressively. “No mere cotton or horsehair for the guests of the Dauntless!”

At this point the amputation was nearly complete. Only the preparation of the stump remained. Samuels was an expert sawbones—from the first cut to the last ligature, scarcely two minutes had passed—but Norrington felt as though he had stood for hours, and he imagined Jip felt it had taken days. The boy was trembling and sweating, and unacknowledged tears had left glittering tracks along his cheeks, but he was still valiantly concentrating on his first lesson in amputation, where he was both pupil and subject. The commodore readily admitted that he himself would never have had the courage.

Exchanging thread for knife, Samuels ignored the boy’s tears and spoke to the fascination. “Now I’m going to scrape any ridges and sharp edges off the bone,” he explained. “You don’t want anything to irritate or work back through the skin covering the wound.” 

There were few more horrifying sounds, Norrington decided, than the sound of steel scraping on bone. He noted that Groves was looking a little pale and was determinedly observing Jip’s face rather than the ongoing operation.

“There’s a reason I did not go in for Medicine,” Groves said fervently when he became aware of the commodore’s gaze. “If a shot ever gets me, I hope it gets me fair and square with none of this gradual removal of parts.” He smiled down at the young pirate’s startled blue eyes. “You’re a braver man than I am, Jip.”

Samuels gave a huff of amusement as he laid down his knife. “Brave or daft, it’s hard to say. Well, lad. It’s on to the last step—tucking all those loose blood vessels away and suturing that flap of skin back over the ends of the bone. It looks like you’re going to survive this day.”

With gentle skill the doctor completed the preparation of the boy’s stump, stitching it neatly except for a hole left for drainage. “There you are, Jip,” he said finally, setting down needle and thread and turning to scrub the blood off his hands in a basin of water. “As dandy an amputation as you could hope for. I told you not to worry. You can spit out that gag now.”

Jip did so with enthusiasm.

The commodore released the boy’s limbs, realizing his hands were cramping. Groves kept hold of Jip’s hand and patted it reassuringly. “You’ll be a grand peg-leg pirate now, won’t you whelp?”

Jip managed a shaky smile for the lieutenant. Then he turned to the doctor. “Can I see my leg you cut off?”

The doctor’s eyebrows lifted his hairline. “I’ve never had a patient with quite your level of insouciance, young man. That is not going to be a thing of beauty.” 

When Jip showed no sign of repenting his desire, Samuels capitulated. “Very well. While Bailey here dresses your wound with egg yolk, oil of roses and turpentine and puts on the lint and bandages, I’ll show you what makes up a leg.”

Norrington gave a strangled noise of protest. There were some things he’d rather not know about his insides. Samuels stared at him witheringly. “You lily-livered officers are free to go now,” he said. “Jip and I are going to have an anatomy lesson, and then I’m putting him to bed.”

With unseemly haste, the commodore and the lieutenant scrubbed their hands that had been spattered with Jip’s blood and donned their coats. Nevertheless, they did not escape before hearing Samuels begin, “Now feel the difference between your healthy flesh and this crackly swollen area. There’s poison gas in there . . .”

The two heads, one grizzled grey and the other gold, scarcely looked up from the object under scrutiny to acknowledge Norrington’s and Grove’s farewells. Then they were back to the intriguing world of arteries and tendons and bone marrow and diseases.

Once outside the surgery, Groves leaned back against the bulkhead and mopped his forehead. “James,” he said weakly. “I am a relatively strong man, am I not?”

“Theodore,” Norrington grinned, “I believe I can safely say that of you without fear of contradiction.”

“Then why,” the lieutenant lamented, “are my knees weak and my stomach revolting at what clearly does nothing but amuse that pestilential child?”

The commodore shrugged. “I have no idea, but I admit to a strong dislike for such procedures, myself. Apparently pirates grow their children tougher than civilization does.” 

“Mark my words,” said Groves grimly. “When that imp recovers, we are going to discover that half a pirate with half a leg is too much pirate for this entire ship.”

“Do you really think he’s going to wait until he recovers?” Norrington asked dubiously. 

He should have known better than to make such a prophecy.

* * * * *

TBC


	23. Between the Fell Incensed Points of Mighty Opposites

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> WARNING: Horrible people saying horrible things.

Mr. Gibbs met an uncharacteristically grim Captain Sparrow as the man emerged from under the companionway.  Shed of his betraying sling and bloodstained clothing, bristling with useless pistols, and girded wrong-sided with his sword, the captain looked ripe for any desperate endeavor.  Whether he was fit for anything other than a brace of days in bed was another question entirely. 

Catching sight of his quartermaster, Jack Sparrow visibly rearranged his features into the semblance of enthusiasm and asked briskly, “Are the lads ready to turn tables on the bloody Royal Navy?”

Not to be outdone, Gibbs mustered a lugubrious cheer and informed him, “Aye, sir! Those what’ll be stayin’ are busy pumpin’ or riggin’ the tackle to raise her masts.  Those what’ll be goin’ are waitin’ for the word.”

Gibbs himself would be staying behind.  He’d let Jack talk him into more damn fool things during their acquaintance than he cared to remember, but mastering swimming was not one of them.  “If the Good Lord had intended mankind to swim,” he’d informed his captain, “He’d have given us gills.”  In the face of all blandishments, threats, and bribes Jack had waved in front of his nose, Gibbs had stuck to his guns.  Jack Sparrow might be able to sweet talk the wind out of the sky, but he’d come up against an immoveable object when he’d tried to coax Joshamee Gibbs into water higher than his knees without a sturdy hull under his feet.

“Right,” Captain Sparrow nodded and swept past Gibbs along the heavily listing deck with a lilt in his step and a jaunty sway he surely must have borrowed from some other time and place.

As her masts settled even further into the silver-laced seas, the _Black Pearl_ let out a whimpering groan.  Gibbs saw Jack’s buoyant step falter for a moment and his shoulders flinch as though a lash had been laid across his back.  But the captain was made of resilient steel, and Gibbs had not reached his side before the insouciant mask was back in place.

“I do hope the _Defender_ is scurrying right along,” Jack observed. “Otherwise she’ll have nothing to capture of us but flotsam.”

Gibbs winced and followed the captain as he clattered down the stairway to the gun deck where the ragged boarding party awaited in the dim light of an open port.

Like a burning brand, Captain Sparrow moved among his weary men igniting their determination.  They had scarcely slept in two days.  Not a dry stitch of ragged clothing clung to any man’s limbs.  Many had wounds still untended.  Their stomachs were hollow and their hearts sickened with loss and fear.  But somehow, with his own spirit, the captain stirred the dying embers of their courage and rekindled the flames of their hope. Jack Sparrow had a Plan, and as long as that was so, the universe would continue.  Somehow he made this desperate and despairing last stand seem like the grandest adventure.

Against Anamaria’s advice, Jack had decided to put the securing of the _Defender_ ’s cannon in the charge of Pintel and Ragetti.  Granted, they were tolerable gunners, but if those two chuckleheads could keep from making a mull of the entire business, Gibbs would eat his hat—if he could ever find it again.  Nevertheless, the captain had insisted that these were the men he wanted.

Even now, as his crew slipped out the gun port and made their way along the fallen mast, Jack was hovering around those two clowns with last minute, highly repetitive instructions.

“As soon you’ve seized her swivel guns, aim them above the _Pearl_ ’s decks,” he reminded Pintel and Ragetti. “We won’t fire unless the Navy decides to get valiantly stupid and shoots first.  Do not . . . I repeat . . . do not blow any more holes in my ship unless and until I give you the order!”  The captain glared at them.

The _Black Pearl_ gave a plaintive sigh and tipped a little further.

“Don’t you worry, ol’ girl.” Pintel patted the splintered timbers reassuringly.  “Rags ‘n me is real good at this.  What we shoots at, we hits. ‘An what we don’ shoot at, we don’ hit.”

“We won’t harm a hair on your head,” Ragetti added fondly.

“Ships don’t have hair!” Pintel scowled at his mate in exasperation.

“That don’t matter,” Ragetti maintained stoutly. “It’s what you call a metaphor. She knows what I mean.”

Gibbs reflected it was only at moments like these that he understood why Jack did not dump his former mutineers on the nearest deserted island.  In their own way, they were nearly as foolish over this ship as he was.

However, as the two of them tried scramble out the gun port at the same time, then had to untangle themselves and try again, Gibbs admitted to a certain amount of misgiving.

“This were a whole heap easier when we was immortal,” Pintel groused to Ragetti from the dubious safety of the ship as the younger man finally crept out to a line over open water.

“You were getting fat as a flawn anyway there, Pintel,” Gibbs said, giving the man a hearty slap on the back that did double duty as a shove. “This’ll be good for you.”

As Pintel’s bald head disappeared, Gibbs dusted his hands together. “That’s the lot of ‘em,” he proclaimed, looking back at Jack and the stolid Tearlach.

But the captain had turned away from his men to his ship, his hand resting in farewell, unmoving on one blackened beam, his face hidden in shadow.  Jack Sparrow was no longer a maelstrom of seething energy. If anything, the fire had consumed him from the heart outward until he was nearly transparent with its glow, an ember crumpling at its edges into papery ash.

When he faced them again, the enthusiasm had drained out of him, and he simply looked exhausted. “Let’s get this over with,” he ordered Tearlach. 

As the silent giant and the, for once, equally silent pirate captain maneuvered Jack through the gun port and down into the supporting embrace of the sea, Gibbs couldn’t help wincing in sympathy.  That could not be easy on Jack’s ribs, but the air remained astonishingly clear of any foul language.  Apparently the situation had got beyond the point where cursing would be a relief. Gibbs own ribs hurt just thinking about it.

This entire caper was insanity.  Gibbs knew it was.  But if there was one skill at which Jack Sparrow excelled, it was the trussing up of a man’s wits until he no longer recognized his peril.  For a few fatal moments, the madness would seem divine.  Then, by the time a body came to his senses, he would be in trouble up to his armpits and sinking fast.

“It’s always neck or nothing for ol’ Jack,” Gibbs grumbled to Tearlach. “Never sailed under such a rope-ripe jinglebrain of a captain.”

Tearlach grinned and nodded agreeably. He turned to follow Jack, but Gibbs put a restraining hand on his arm.  The big man looked back at him questioningly.

“I know it’s an impossible job, but . . . watch out for him, will you?” Gibbs asked gruffly.  “Keep him from killin’ himself?”

Tearlach raised an eyebrow and shrugged.

“I know. I know,” the quartermaster sighed in resignation. “I’d not hazard a wooden tuppence ‘gainst him doin’ somethin’ bloody totty-headed, but give it your best shot, eh lad?”

With a sloppy salute, Tearlach ducked out the gun port and lowered himself into the wave-washed rigging.

Gibbs watched until first Jack’s dark head disappeared under the fallen sails and then Tearlach’s shiny pate. At last there was no longer any evidence on the restless water that men clung to the vestiges of their ship, waiting.

A shiver that had nothing to do with the wet or the cold rippled along Gibbs’ skin.  It seemed a terrible wrong, somehow, that they should commit their living to the sea even before they had a chance to relinquish to her their dead.

* * * * *

With the long snouts of her guns bristling from her flanks and red clusters of armed marines glowering in her tops, the _Defender_ drew cautiously up beside the _Black Pearl._ Her commanding officer, Captain Walton, paced the quarterdeck with nervous, staccato steps. He was sure of his ship, of his men’s abilities and determination, of the helplessness of their quarry.  And yet, as the gaunt, blasted sides of the grim _Black Pearl_ loomed above him, he could not repress a shudder. This ship was legend. Men surrendered to her at the first warning shot across their bows, but she had never struck her colours.

Even now, with her hull made skeletal by the pounding she had taken from her opponents, with her black masts gouging gouts of froth from the heaving surface of the grey sea, and her gun ports resolutely sealed, she seemed silently menacing.

Thus the sense of dislocation was extreme when a round face, framed with enthusiastic grey side-whiskers appeared over the rail of the _Black Pearl,_ and a cheery, gravelly voice hailed Lieutenant Armstrong, whom Walton had placed in charge of the boarding party, “Ahoy there, mate!” 

The lieutenant aimed his pistol at the pirate.

“Welcome aboard the _Black Pearl_!” the man continued jovially, flourishing an arm, although his eyes watched the pistol warily. “Sorry we’re so inhospitable-like, but you’ve caught us at a bad time. I can’t give you the grand tour, but if you’ll just step across, you’re free t’ show yourselves about, wherever you like.”

The captain signaled his confused lieutenant to continue the boarding action. Whatever they’d been expecting on the decks of this doom-haunted ship, this wasn’t it.

* * * * *

Lieutenant Armstrong found the boarding of the _Black Pearl_ to be somewhat anticlimactic.  The usual cacophony of shouts and thudding grapnels and planks was met not with violent repulse but with a one man welcoming party.

“M’ friends call me Gibbs,” the elderly pirate offered heartily, holding out his hand. “And who might you be, young whippersnapper?”

The lieutenant caught himself staring in bewilderment at the grimy, calloused hand outstretched to him. Not knowing what else to do, he shook it briefly. “Lieutenant Armstrong, of His Majesty’s Royal Navy,” he said tersely. This was not going as planned or even as feared. He made a valiant attempt to steer the encounter back on course. “It is my duty to claim this prize in the name of the king and arrest you and the crew of this ship for acts of piracy . . .”

The pirate did not allow him to continue. “Yes, yes, of course it is,” he said soothingly. “You’re doin’ just fine, lad. But you’ll have t’ excuse me. We’re a mite busy at the moment. This ship is sinkin’ an’ if we don’t move right snappy, the sea’ll claim your prize and execute your sentence without a by-your-leave. You can just start with arrestin’ the men what has nothin’ t’ do. But I’d advise leavin’ the ones on the pumps ’til the last, ‘cause the minute they stop workin’, she’s goin’ down. Savvy?”

Indeed, the pirates were obviously preoccupied with the attempt to keep their ship afloat.  Sweating, grimy men drove the pumps as though they had long since forgotten what they were doing and why.  A half-rounded spar had been lashed on top of the gunwale for the parbuckles to lead over when rove, and temporary sheers were already being erected for re-masting the badly tilting vessel.  Their self-appointed guide seemed far more concerned with this labour than with the fact that he was in the hands of the British Navy.

Armstrong found himself with his bewildered men at his side staring at the retreating back of the pirate. Gathering his wits from wherever this hurricane of confusion had scattered them, he snapped, “Halt where you are, mister, or I’ll shoot.”

The elderly man—Gibbs he’d said—turned, brow raised. “You could use a little polishin’ o’ your manners, young cub.  But I’ll let it pass. What is it you want?”

 “I’d like to speak with your captain,” the lieutenant said firmly, trying to regain the illusion that he was in control of this conversation.

Gibbs gave a gusty sigh. “Wouldn’t we all, lad. Wouldn’t we all.” But he made no move, either to direct his captor, or to call for his commanding officer.

This was not going well.

“Jack Sparrow,” Armstrong snapped, striving to remember that he was the one giving the orders here. “Bring me to him.” He jammed the muzzle of his pistol into one of the tarnished silver buttons on the man’s vest.

“Alas,” the pirate lamented, pushing aside the pistol with one aggrieved finger. “It pains me t’ be the first t’ inform you, what with your bein’ so concerned for his welfare an’ all, that the bonny Captain Sparrow took a shot in the head and is no longer with us. He’ll be sorely missed—by yourself not the least, I imagine.” He shook his head sorrowfully.  “Best captain in the Caribbee, he were. Couldn’t no one catch him. Looks like he’s slipped your noose one last time, Lieutenant.” He leaned confidentially towards his captor and winked. “Best place t’ search for ol’ Captain Jack right about now would have t’ be in one o’ the lower circles o’ Hell, but I can’t recommend it. If you’re lookin’ for the man what’s in charge o’ the _Pearl_ till we get a chance t’ vote on it, I guess that’d be my humble self.”

The lieutenant stared at him in consternation. “Are you drunk, man?”

“Drunk?” the pirate said wistfully. “You wouldn’t happen t’ be totin’ a bit o’ rum with you? If I was drunk, I’d be perfectly sensible. It’s only bein’ sober has me head in a bit o’ a spin.”

Very well.  Perhaps the pirate spoke the truth.  It was certainly plausible that their bombardment had already accounted for their quarry.  But the man could just as easily be lying.  Sparrow had the reputation of never being where the Royal Navy wanted him.  They would have to search the ship.

Deciding to ignore his unhelpful guide, Armstrong gave orders that rifles be trained on the pirates working to save the ship.  The lieutenant could see no benefit in stopping the repairs.  If these villains wanted to preserve this prize for the Royal Navy, far be it from him to hinder them.

As his men jogged to their various stations, not a pirate made a hostile move.  A few glanced up at the Naval officers and marines, but most concentrated fiercely on the tasks beneath their hands.

The peacefulness of this conquest was entirely too eerie.

Those turned backs and averted eyes burned like molten lead.  These men were neither beaten nor passive.  Their resistance held a weight far heavier than the futile clash of steel.

Above the veneer of cheerful cooperation presented by the pirates, an almost palpable miasma of resentment and despair wafted along the bloodstained decks of the ship, as though the _Black Pearl_ herself were incensed at what had been done to her. 

The sense of uneasiness increased. Lieutenant Armstrong could see it in the staccato movements of his men, in the way they clustered together and started at the grind of wood on wood, the groan of stretching ropes, and the occasional shout as the pirates struggled to heave up the fallen masts. 

He did not trust these criminals.  The ship would have to be searched, but he would make sure his men were prepared for an ambush at every blind corner. The _Black Pearl_ stank of treachery.

* * * * *

The chilling sounds of boarding action reverberated through the drenched and debris-scattered carpet under Requin’s feet.  The thunk of grapnels and the hissing zing of rope pulling taut.  The clatter of planks and the drumming of boots.  Confused voices as the invaders discovered the lack of resistance on the weather decks.  Crisp orders and the fanning out of search parties.  But no shots, thank God.

He gripped the hilt of his cutlass tightly in his sweat-slicked palm.  Fervently he prayed that he would not have to use it.  He’d been a merchant seaman, pressed at age fifteen into serving before the mast, two of the worst years of hell he’d ever lived through in his short life, before Captain Sparrow, for whatever reason, had decided that he, the Louis Grimaud that once was, would make an ideal addition to a pirate crew and had kidnapped him during the plundering of their ship. 

Which only went to show that the captain was truly quite, quite mad, because Requin had hated everything about the sea and ships and pirates and the food and the weather and particularly fighting.  He still hated fighting, and he had never understood why this never seemed to bother a pirate captain like Sparrow. 

But now, as one of the few able-bodied crewmen left on the _Black Pearl_ , he had been given the job of protecting the disabled first mate.  “Not that she’ll admit she needs help,” Captain Sparrow had shrugged. “But she can’t walk, and that limits a body in a tussle.  Just tell her it’s captain’s orders and not for you to question.” He’d grinned. “She is, of course, bound to question _my_ orders, but _I_ am goin’ to be safely off the ship and out of range.”

When Requin had objected that he wasn’t any good in a fight, Captain Sparrow had reassured him, “I don’t want you to have to fight. Fightin’s a last resort, because we can’t win a fight.  Just do nothin’ as much as possible.  No surrender. No resistance. Confuses the hell out of ‘em.”

“Then why . . . ?” Requin had begun, confused.

“Why do I want you armed in my cabin, lad?” Sparrow had finished for him. “Because these are rough men, and she’s a woman, though she forgets it most times, and she may need backup if the wrong sort get their hands on her.  She won’t likely be rousin’ any chivalric notions in any but the most unusual English sailor.  Ain’t white enough nor delicate enough nor dressed fancy enough. Discipline ought t’ hold ‘em off, but it might not.  War can make an ugly thing out of a man.”

“How will I know what to do?” Requin had worried.

“Anamaria will know,” the captain had assured him. “Ain’t nobody better at survivin’. So you just follow her orders.  If she says fight, you fight.  If she says stand and watch . . . well, she has that right, too. And I’m tellin’ you now, son, that’ll be the harder order to follow. But I’m not leavin’ her alone. Savvy?”

Requin had thought that the worst part would be informing Anamaria that he was going to be her watchdog, but she’d merely looked at him as he’d slunk in the door and said, “This was Jack’s bright idea, wasn’t it?” Which had allowed him to absolve himself of all responsibility with a single nervous nod. Anamaria had sighed. “Then you might as well sit down. Make yourself comfortable. I won’t bite.”

Requin wasn’t sure he believed that last part, but he’d done as he was told.  However, as he listened to the rumble of the dreaded English marines approaching, he knew the worst was yet to come.  These were men he’d been taught since childhood to hate and fear as enemies of his country.  They were also representatives of the law that hanged pirates without appeal, never mind that he was a pirate entirely by accident.  He’d only stayed because it was the first place he’d found where he hadn’t had to fear being beaten.

Anamaria tugged the blanket up under her chin and held it there with her hands, looking small and fragile. Requin felt every lack of inches he possessed as he heard voices and trampling outside the door.

“Put your cutlass on the table in front of you, just out of easy reach,” Anamaria hissed at him. “Then stay seated and don’t move.”

So it was to be watch and not fight. Requin didn’t know whether he was more relieved or terrified as he followed her instructions.

Then the door was kicked open and a burly, red-coated Englishman shouldered into the cabin, bayoneted rifle at the ready.

As his eyes adjusted to the lower light and he took in the tableaux in front of him, a huge snaggle-toothed grin spread across his homely features. “Well now, lookie what we have here!” he said jovially, winking at Requin. Catching sight of the abandoned cutlass, the intruder added it to his own baldric. “Hey Banks!” he bellowed back over his shoulder. “Come see what I found!”

“Cut your bloody yammerin’, Hargraves,” an irritated voice answered. “I’m not deaf! Now what is it’s got you in such a . . . Ah!” The owner of the voice was a much finer-featured, more slender man than the first intruder.  His face was made attractive by rich blue eyes framed by thick dark lashes.  But the smile he turned on Anamaria made Requin think of a shark.

Hargraves smirked. “Sparrow’s got hisself a little negra doxy tucked up all nice in his bed, don’t he?”

“If that don’t beat all!” the newcomer, Banks, exclaimed with a hungry note in his voice. “This here business is lookin’ more like a pleasure every minute!”

His blockish companion joined him in perusing Anamaria’s face and blanketed form as though they were customers at a market.  The first mate stared back at them unflinchingly.

“Too bad she’s so dark,” the one named Hargraves decided. “Might almost be pretty with those dinner-plate eyes.”

Banks shrugged dismissively. “Whores are all alike when you close your eyes.  An’ this one’s mighty shapely.”

Requin could understand enough of what they were saying to have to resist the urge to run Banks through on the spot.  Suddenly, he could see a very good use for a sword.  But Anamaria gave no word, and he sat as though pinned.  These two hulking Englishmen would easily make mincemeat of him, anyway.

Hargraves frowned. “Suppose we got t’ tell the lieutenant, eh?”

“What?” Banks seemed absorbed in his own sordid imagination. “Oh. Yes. I suppose so.” He turned and called out the door, “Lieutenant Armstrong!”

A shorter, stocky young man in a naval officer’s uniform appeared in the doorway. “What is it?”

“Found us the pirate’s game pullet, sir,” Hargraves responded. “Thought she might be useful.”

The lieutenant glanced at Requin, then turned to regard Anamaria. “I see,” he said dispassionately. “Good work, men.” 

Requin was relieved to see only calculation in his face, as though the lieutenant was factoring Anamaria into his plans, but had no other interest in her. 

“Young woman,” he addressed the first mate. “Where is Sparrow hiding out?”

“He was hit early on in the battle, sir,” Anamaria said evenly. “Lot of men went down back there.”

It was not even a lie.

Armstrong held her eyes for a long moment. Then he turned to the marines. “She may be telling the truth. It certainly matches with what the acting shipmaster told me.  But I’m not taking that chance.  Hargraves, you’ll remain here and keep these two under guard.  Tie the boy up so he won’t cause trouble. The woman may prove useful as leverage if we do find Sparrow.  Banks, continue searching the ship. There may be more pirates tucked away in corners hoping to escape our notice. I want them all rounded up.  This could be an ambush, so be careful.”

And then the lieutenant was gone in a dignified flurry.  Requin felt abandoned and helpless without even the hope of grabbing a weapon.  However, he was grateful that if one of these _cochons_ had to remain, it was Hargraves.  Banks was the one who gave him shivers.  .

However, Banks did not leave immediately. Instead he advanced on Anamaria. “You puzzle me, little draggle-tail,” he said in a silk-smooth voice.  He reached out and gripped her jaw in the vise of long, elegant fingers, turning her head to study her features. “Whatever could have possessed Sparrow to break the code and turn a pirate ship into a hen-frigate, eh? I’ll wager you’re somethin’ out o’ the ordinary.  Know any number of very fine tricks, hmmm?”  His teeth glinted in that cold-blooded smile again.  “I foresee you and me gettin’ much better acquainted when I’m done flushin’ out the rest o’ these cockroaches.” With a cruel twist of his wrist he released her face so that her head thudded back against the bedding. 

Requin could see the marks of his fingers lingering on Anamaria’s jaw.  He was surprised the bastard hadn’t burnt his hand; the fire in the first mate’s eyes could have slagged a cannon.  But still she said nothing. 

Giving his compatriot a brisk nod, as though they were two perfectly ordinary human beings and not absolute monsters, Banks strode out of the room.

As Requin allowed the burly marine to bind his wrists, he contemplated the irony that these men considered Anamaria the less dangerous of the two of them.

* * * * *

TBC


	24. Mark'd for Hot Vengeance

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> On board the Defender and the Black Pearl things get even more complicated for the boarding parties. Who is going to end up with which ship? And what will happen between Banks and Anamaria? (Avoid finding out if your stomach isn’t very strong--Anamaria is badass.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNING: Mention of attempted rape.

As the two hulls jostled each other across the constantly narrowing and widening strip of sea that churned far below, the captain of the _Defender_ stood with the stillness of ease and iron will by the port rail of the quarterdeck.  He was a slender man of medium height, but imposing in his assurance.  At least he hoped he projected sufficient calm confidence in spite of the battle he was waging with the overwhelming desire to pace and chew his nails.  A commanding officer could not afford the luxury of nervous mannerisms—at least not where his men could see him. 

His ship grunted and creaked reproachfully each time the waves brought the ravaged timbers of her dark opponent clashing against her.  Like a rock in an incoming tide, the waterlogged _Black Pearl_ rode lower and lower, so that in spite of her list to port under the weight of her fallen masts, Walton had a reasonable view of the activity on her decks.  His eyes, grey as the sky, if considerably warmer, followed the movements of his men through the fine drizzle that was still descending.

The tension aboard the _Defender_ had eased ever so slightly as the seizure of the _Black Pearl_ proceeded without incident.  Nevertheless, Captain Walton had not allowed his remaining crew to relax their vigilance.  None of the searches had yet turned up any evidence that Sparrow had survived their bombardment, but neither was there a body as proof that he had not.

If the stories contained any grain of truth in them, a man could not congratulate himself on having eliminated Jack Sparrow until he had that slippery rogue dead and rotted at his feet.

Some men were like that—nigh impossible to kill, so fiercely clinging to their own survival that they seemed to have all of the lives of a cat combined with that creature’s ability to land on its feet no matter from what height it was hurled.  Acknowledging the alchemical mixture of seamanship, daring, desperation and luck that had allowed the pirate to slip his ship from the jaws of the original trap that had been set for him, Captain Walton paid Sparrow the tribute of not dismissing him now.  If the man was still on his ship and among the living, he would be that most dangerous of animals—a predator cornered and fighting for its life.

Not for the first time, Captain Walton wished he were in any condition to lead his boarding party himself.

* * * * *

Alexander Walton had accidentally achieved his first command of a ship during a particularly grueling firefight with a French privateer when a cannon ball had neatly removed the head of his captain and left him, the first officer, to extricate the ship and crew from what was proving to be a losing battle.

He had unexpectedly managed to turn defeat into victory while refusing to leave the quarterdeck in spite of a length of iron bar driven into his hip. Returning to Port Royal with his prize, he’d scarcely been conscious let alone triumphant.  When he could think at all, he had imagined he’d also just achieved his last command. 

Nothing in his life ever turned out as he expected.

He had questioned, if not Commodore Norrington’s sanity, at least his judgment when his young commanding officer had breezed into his dingy sickroom with the light of the sun on the sea in his eyes and a set of orders confirming Walton’s rank as Captain in the Royal Navy.  His feeble protests that he was incapable of walking out of the house let alone taking command of a vessel had been met with Commodore Norrington’s politely implacable disbelief.  Surely no officer of the King’s Navy would let himself be routed by a handful of clucking old women and avaricious horseleeches.

“I have,” the Commodore had informed him, “as sweet a little brig as ever a man sold his soul to command, floating in the harbour awaiting her new captain.  If an officer of your caliber cannot outwit Mistress Beedle and her ilk and present himself inside of a month at her commissioning, I tremble for England. There are dastardly pirates to chase, French pretensions to suppress, and the glory of England to uphold.  I need men with brains, not legs, to accomplish these.  Legs are what we keep minions and midshipmen for.”

“Begging the commodore’s pardon,” Walton could not keep the grin off his face, “but if England is really serious about quashing piracy and walloping the French, she will appoint Mistress Beedle to the Admiralty House post haste.”

That had surprised a rare crack of laughter from the commodore.  “You may have a point there, Captain Walton. I shall be sure to mention it to them at the earliest opportunity.”

Against his own expectations, Walton had limped aboard the _Defender_ to take command of her 100 feet of hull, her 18 six-pounders and two swivel guns, and her 110 officers and enlisted men, just as Commodore Norrington had ordered. 

But the wreck that remained of his left hip had relegated him forever to ornamenting the quarterdeck rather than leaping between ships with his pistol drawn.

* * * * *

Moving to another vantage point with the limp that was so much a part of him he scarcely noticed it anymore, Captain Walton considered the status of his seizure of Jack Sparrow’s ship.

If his men aboard the _Defender_ were more relaxed, such was not the case aboard the _Black Pearl._

On one of his circumnavigations of the prize ship’s decks, Lieutenant Armstrong had confided across the few feet separating the ships that he’d never seen the men so spooked.  “If I’m not careful,” he had grumbled, “I’ll have two parties come around a corner and open fire on one another.”

The humours of the Fates being what they were, several minutes later a shot rang out on the _Pearl_ , electrifying the occupants of both vessels and sending Armstrong boiling down a hatch in a cloud of profanity that could have stripped the decking off a lesser ship. 

When he reappeared, Armstrong was followed by two marines supporting a sheepish-looking sailor with blood dripping from his foot.  Having successfully disposed of his unfortunate crewman across the planks to the _Defender_ , the lieutenant informed Captain Walton that he would keel-haul himself if he ever issued that bloody idiot a personal weapon again.  “That is the fourth time his nerves have overcome him, and he’s shot something inappropriate,” Armstrong said in exasperation.  “At least this time he merely hit himself.  Next time I’m like to lose something far more valuable.”

As the lieutenant stalked off, and the strain on the two ships abated somewhat, Captain Walton pondered the event with a growing sense of unease.

The echo of that shot had shivered through the pirates toiling over the pumps and the ship’s masts like a strong wind.  Heads had come up as hands moved convulsively towards empty scabbards.  A growl of voices, like distant thunder, had swelled and faded again before the captive crew slowly subsided into an unconvincing submission.

Walton could recognize men labouring under orders they found almost unbearable. 

And yet the elderly pirate who claimed charge of the _Black Pearl_ did not seem a commander forged of sufficient fire and steel to hold such a crew to such a course.  Could Sparrow do so from beyond a watery grave? Or was this unnatural calm evidence that the pirate captain was still alive to enforce some mad and nefarious plot only such a mind could conceive?

* * * * *

When no further shots had shattered the eerie calm of the ship, Requin had almost begun to relax. 

Then the cabin door swung open to admit Banks. 

Hargraves had been all bluster but no real threat, and Requin had almost believed the sensible lieutenant would be seeing to their disposition.  Though if Captain Sparrow was not winning the day over on the _Defender_ , he supposed even the lieutenant would be handing them over to be hanged for the entertainment and edification of the masses.  But Banks was back, sweating and triumphant and tossing his bayonet onto the tabletop.

“All rounded up,” he said smugly. “At least all of ‘em still standin’. What a passel of cannon fodder! Scarcely a man of ‘em fit to straggle out on deck. No wonder they lost masts in that storm.  The middies could have handled this capture by themselves. Course we haven’t found Sparrow yet.  Wardroom’s thick with stiffs, but he ain’t one of ‘em.”

As he was speaking, he stripped off his crossbelts and sword and began unfastening his coat.  “And now for the just reward after a long day and night’s work.  While the cowardly bastard’s hidin’ out shakin’ in his boots—or feedin’ the sharks—I’ll be plowin’ a furrow with his heifer.”

Tense with the need to do something, but having no clue what it might be, Requin tossed an anguished glance at Anamaria. She was watching the two marines, her face carved in unmoving mahogany, her eyes black with fury.  Requin, like every member of the crew, had felt the lash of Anamaria’s temper before, but he realized now that he’d never seen her really angry. Those had been short afternoon cloudbursts before this looming hurricane.  He didn’t know whether to be afraid for her or for what she might do to those two unsuspecting English marines.

Hargraves looked torn between eagerness and reluctance.  “Captain might not be so pleased ‘bout this, Banks,” he said worriedly. 

“Captain’ll understand,” Banks dismissed his apprehension.  “It’s been a long six months to depend on shipboard fare. And what does it matter who does what to this trollop? She’s naught but gallows bait anyway.”

He approached Anamaria, teeth bared in a predatory smile. “Fact is, she might appreciate tuckin’ a real man between her legs before she swings, won’t you, sweetheart? Considerin’ you’ve had to make do with that poor excuse for a painted popinjay, Sparrow, eh? Sounds good for a change, don’t it?” He grasped the blanket under which she was hiding and twitched it onto the deck.

“You piss more than you drink,” Anamaria said flatly.

Banks’s smile twisted into a snarl. “Oh, you have been fed with a fire shovel, haven’t you, you dirty slattern!” He gripped Anamaria’s hair at the back of her head hard, arching her neck back until she winced.  “Now listen to me, you filthy little harlot. This can go one of two ways. Either you cooperate, and I make this easy for you. Or you fight me, and this is going to be very, very hard. Understand?”  With his other hand he was ripping at the neckline of her shirt.

Requin saw every muscle outlined in Anamaria’s arms as she clenched her fists by her sides.  He leapt clumsily to his feet, his hands bound behind him throwing him off balance. “No!” he shouted. “You cannot do that! She is not . . .”

“Shut up, Requin!” Anamaria’s command was quiet but so intense it stopped Requin dead in the water. “Don’t make a cake of yourself. Please. This is between me and this . . .” the air was thick with unshed words “. . . fine gentleman,” she finally finished, the irony dripping like vitriol. “Just . . . stay calm . . . and don’t do anything . . . stupid.”

“That’s a good girl,” Banks relaxed his hold on her hair.  “I knew you were fly to the time of day.”

Slowly Requin subsided into the chair again, still holding Anamaria’s gaze.  This was what Captain Sparrow had meant when he’d said it was hardest to stand by and not fight.

Anamaria nodded her approval.

Requin wanted to look away.  He wanted to close his eyes and plug his ears.  But if this was all he could do—be an island of sanity in this sea of madness for Anamaria to cling to—then that was what he would do.  The captain had asked him not to leave her alone.

* * * * *

It took the crew of the _Defender_ a stunned eternal moment to register that their ship had been inexplicably boarded by what seemed an unending swarm of enemies.  One instant the decks had been clear and peaceful, the next they seethed with ragged, dripping bodies and flashing steel.  The startled reports of pistols and muskets, the heart-stopping cries marking accurate shots, rapidly dissolved into the glittering clash of blades.

In the moments before the fighting became too fierce for thought, horrified realization struck Captain Walton.  However impossible it might seem, the pirates of the _Black Pearl_ had made it onto the _Defender._  

Anguish speared his heart as he saw how vastly outnumbered were his remnant men.  Knowing the disparity between Sparrow’s crew and his own, he’d committed the majority of them to boarding the _Pearl._   All that remained on the _Defender_ were a section of marines in her tops, several gun crews, his cook and artificer, and the ship’s boys. Thirty souls in all—enough to work the ship but nowhere near enough to quell such an invasion.

Their only hope of salvation lay in the men aboard the _Black Pearl_ being able to cross back over to the _Defender_.  But the pirates had already shoved the boarding planks into the sea and hacked away all but two of the ropes binding the ships together.  Apparently Sparrow had also ordered his decks cleared of grapnels and planks, because Walton could hear Armstrong above the din bellowing for a search to be made for them.

Through the haze of rain and recoil smoke, he could see pirates stealing up the rigging, taking some musket fire, at least one falling into the sea, but overcoming his valiant marines before they could reload.  Below, his gun crews were doggedly defending their charges, but they could not hold out much longer against such superior numbers.  And the youngest of his crew.  Walton felt sick.  He could just make out tiny Teddy Parker, he of the golden voice and dancing feet, fighting gallantly but falling to two pirates twice his size, his perpetually grimy face streaked with the white tracks of tears as the villains wrestled him to the deck. What would become of the children?

And then the battle engulfed him.

Time for strategy ripped from their hands by this rapid attack, Walton and one of his two officers remaining on the quarterdeck emptied their pistols into the first pirate hat to show above the companionway. The shots hit home, flinging the hat helplessly into the melee in the waist of the ship.  However, the head that should have accompanied it remained unscathed, appearing far below the upraised cutlass on which the hat had been perched.  

Walton found himself facing the smallest man he’d ever seen outside a freak show.  A single braid on his chin sticking out straight with excitement, blue eyes glaring, mouth distorted in a snarl, the little man attacked.  Drawing his sword in a sweeping parry Walton sent his diminutive opponent reeling into the orbit of one of his lieutenants. But scarcely had Walton recovered from that encounter when a shout rang out: “’Ware, Captain!”

Whirling to meet the threat behind him, Walton’s stomach made a dive for the bilges.

The man was a giant.  He loomed above Walton like a great bear, naked torso decorated with tattoos and scars, the glistening muscles of his arms equal in size to the Naval captain’s thighs. In spite of his great bulk, he struck with the speed of a cobra, what his bladework lacked in science thoroughly compensated for by the power and swiftness of his attacks. 

Walton found none of his superior technique the least bit effective against an opponent who could continue an attack right through the parry that was intended to block it, as though the captain’s sword were a mere blade of grass.

Yet no expression crossed the man’s face.  Silently and relentlessly, this Goliath of a man pursued his smaller opponent.

The _Defender_ ’s captain knew he could not last long against such an adversary. 

In the scramble of desperate footwork to avoid being cleaved in two like a beef carcass, Walton felt something in his protesting hip give way.  Pain radiated like strokes of lightning, causing him to stumble and nearly fall to the rain-slicked deck.

The pirate’s blade narrowly missed removing the captain’s sword arm as Walton struggled to his feet, ignoring the agony twisting knives into his leg.

Inexorably, his colossal opponent forced the Naval captain back towards the taffrail.  Fatigue began to stalk Walton, crushing his breath and filling his ears with the drum of his labouring heart.  Sweat stung his eyes and the muscles in his sword arm quivered with the effort of withstanding the bone-jarring blows. He could not endure much more.

Twice more, Walton fell back against the deck for what he thought must be the last time, and twice again he managed to beat aside the killing stroke and regain his staggering footing.  The third time, there was no mistaking it.  Down on his knees, his sword hand pinned to the deck by one enormous boot, he saw the pirate’s cutlass descending in an arc he would never be able to evade.

Bracing himself for the bright, sharp impact of death, Captain Walton refused to look away.

Then the huge pirate’s blade stopped just short of Walton’s chest as a second blade snaked across his neck, biting the vulnerable flesh under which arteries pulsed in rapid counterpoint to his gasps for air. His sword was kicked from his nerveless grasp and his arm was wrenched back between his shoulder blades in a manner that drowned out the protest of his hip as he was heaved to his feet.

“Now, mate,” a husky, intimate voice breathed by his ear. “For two people who’ve never met, things have been getting a mite personal between us.  You’ve been killing my men and trying your damnedest to take down my ship.  So I thought it was about time we got to know each other.”

Jack Sparrow. It could only be he. 

Somehow the pirate captain had managed to dissolve off the decks of the _Black Pearl_ and rematerialize aboard the _Defender._ Commodore Norrington was right.  There was something inhuman about the man.

Preferring a quick end to whatever vengeance Sparrow must surely be plotting, Walton made an abortive and entirely rash attempt to wrest himself from the pirate’s grasp.

“Unhand me, you bloody bastard!” he choked. Warmth trickled down his neck although as yet there was no pain. 

“Owwww! Damnit, you mutton-headed gudgeon!” his captor swore. “Do you _want_ me to slit your throat? Tearlach, hang on to this fool before he accidentally kills himself!”

Finding himself as thoroughly immobilized as a swaddled infant in the unyielding grip of the giant, Walton ceased to struggle and glared impotently at the pirate swaggering into view, worn cutlass blade continuing to radiate from his captive’s neck. 

Curiously, Captain Walton scrutinized his arch-adversary, the legendary captain of the _Black Pearl_. Even amidst the horde of barbarically clad felons in the uproar of skirmishing, he drew the eye, a flickering flame of a man, sparks of colour glinting in his wild locks, gold flashing in his savage grin, perilous shadows lurking in his eyes.

“Let us keep this as civilized as possible,” the pirate addressed the Naval captain, all exaggerated cordiality and expansive gesture. “Since our mutual acquaintance Commodore Norrington is not present to do the honours, let me introduce myself.”

With mock courtesy, the pirate captain tipped his head in a slight bow.  “I am Captain Jack Sparrow, although not, alas, at your service.”  He straightened with some difficulty. “Whom do I have the honour of addressing?”

“You whoreson knave! I'll see you hanged!”  Walton spat, the urge to skewer the wretch stronger than his fear of the pirate’s intentions.

“Tut, tut, my good man.”  Sparrow shook his head regretfully. “Manners must have changed a great deal since the last time I had call t’ use ‘em!”  The enigmatic expression in his dark eyes grew more overtly dangerous. “You may want to consider carefully the fact that the man with his really quite serviceable sword at your throat is the same man you have been doing your very best to kill for the better parts of two days.  You walk a fine line, Captain. My patience has worn thin.”  His voice hardened like lava pouring into a cold sea. “Your name,” he insisted.  The pressure increased to the point of pain on Walton’s neck.

In spite of his determination to show no weakness, Walton felt his treacherous stomach lurch. He had to buy Lieutenant Armstrong time to muster a counter attack. “My name, scoundrel, is Captain Alexander Walton,” he said, pleased that his voice did not betray the falling of his heart.

“Very good, Captain Walton,” Sparrow approved, relaxing his threatening cutlass.  “I am afraid we shall have to dispense with the handshake.” He shrugged unapologetically.  “No point in exhibiting that one comes in good faith and unarmed when one does not, eh?”

Several of the pirates within earshot guffawed heartily.  That they had the leisure to do so was not a good sign.  The fighting was decreasing rapidly as his men were overpowered, and Armstrong’s men were having difficulty aiming for the pirates on the opposite ship because the cowards were shielding themselves behind the _Defender’_ s captive crew.

“I am very much afraid I shall have to order you bound,” Sparrow apologized insincerely, gesturing to his enormous minion to fulfill his word.  “Vicissitudes of war and all that.  I’m sure you understand.  If you don’t put up a fuss, Tearlach will be careful not to break anything too valuable.”

“What do you want with my ship?” Walton demanded, ignoring the ropes being lashed around his wrists.  Anything would be better than being manhandled by Sparrow’s monster, he decided.

“Correction.  That would be _my_ ship now, Captain Walton.” The smugness in Sparrow’s voice was unendurable. “She’s a sweet little brig.  Though if you’re real reasonable, we might be able to discuss terms for you getting her back.”

Walton glared at the pirate with futile rage but could think of no response sufficiently scathing.

 “And now Captain Walton, let us examine your situation for a moment, shall we?” Sparrow said.  “It seems to me that you have a dilemma, don’t you?”

 “That is an interesting way to put it,” Walton said attempting to match the pirate captain’s nonchalance.  “My situation, as you call it, depends on what exactly your intentions are.”

“Just furthering your education, mate.”  Sparrow’s fierce grin had far too much of the shark in it.  “Now your crew is over there holding my _Black Pearl_.  She’s dismasted and going down, and they have no guns.  I, on the other hand, am in your former position—I can order these little cannon,” he waved his hand in the direction of the _Defender’s_ guns, all in the hands of pirates now, “to blast your men to bits of blood and bone and gristle, eh mate? It’s a hell of a feeling, ain’t it?”

“You wouldn’t dare!”  It was less a statement of belief than a devout prayer.

The pirate captain closed measure with Walton until barely a hand span separated their eyes. “I’d not be so all-fire certain about what I would or would not dare, mate,” he said softly, his voice going dulcetly vicious.  “I’m Captain Jack Sparrow—or haven’t you heard the stories?”

Walton had heard many stories, some more fabulous than others.  Which ones were true was a question he wasn’t prepared to answer.  But the one thing they all had in common was the fact that Jack Sparrow never quite lost a desperate gambit.  He had the feeling the _Defender_ was about to become another one of those stories if he didn’t think of something extraordinary very soon.

“Now Captain Walton,” Sparrow broke into his silence. “I’m taking a gamble that Commodore Norrington is a fair decent judge of men and that’ll make you a good man. So you’d best be praying I’m right, because we are about to see just how much your life is worth to your crew.  I hope, for your sake, you’ve been fair to them.” Sparrow grinned madly at him. “So, Captain Walton,” he waved his hand in the direction of the _Black Pearl,_ “I suggest that you have a word with your men.”

“My men know their duty,” Walton said with proud assurance.

“Ah, yes—to die for the sake of . . . what?” Sparrow asked impatiently.  “That scuppered ship?  The bit of swag drowning in her hold?  Some misguided sense of honour? For the sake of what prize will you see them cold and bloody dead at your feet?” Anger licked at the edges of his words.  “Let me chart another course for you.  You order your men on the _Pearl_ to surrender and all of us survive—or at least all of you survive and what’s left of us can go our way to live or die as fate sees fit.”

“I do not surrender to pirates, nor do I strike bargains with them,” Walton insisted doggedly.

“I’m not giving you that option, Captain Walton.” Sparrow’s tone was clipped and cold.  “Your ship is mine, will you or nil you.  My men outnumber yours. Whether you live or die will not change that fact. But as you wish.” He raised his hands in resignation and turned towards the _Black Pearl,_ propelling Walton ahead of him to foil any attempts by Armstrong’s marines to pick him off with a well-placed shot. “ _I’ll_ have a word with your men.”

Aboard the pirate ship, Armstrong and his boarding party churned with frustrated violence, firearms aimed at the Navy vessel.  At the first shots aboard the _Defender_ , they’d immobilized the free pirates working to resurrect the _Black Pearl_.  Only the men at the pumps remained, working resolutely at musket point.  Sparrow’s sweeping glance took in the hair-trigger situation and alighted unerringly upon the man in charge.

Maintaining his one-handed grip on Walton, Captain Sparrow flourished his other hand.  “Ahoy there, Lieutenant!” he hailed. “What say you to a bit of parley before any more unnecessary death and destruction occurs?”

“The only word I have for you, villain,” Armstrong’s retort blazed across the space of sea, “is that if you do not release Captain Walton, surrender your arms to him, and order your crew to stand down, I will kill every living pirate on this vessel,” he paused for effect, then delivered his coup de grace, “including the lovely young woman you have ensconced in your cabin.”

Walton started. What in hell was Armstrong up to now?  What woman was this?

The pirate captain’s eyebrows flew up into his red scarf.  “Now that’s a plan I hadn’t considered,” he said contemplatively.  “Just what do you propose should be my incentive for doing any such thing?  I might point out,” he offered with the air of a man dropping a bit of useful information, “that all I have to do is kill every Navy man on this vessel and set sail for the horizon leaving you to drown with my dead when the _Pearl_ goes down.”

“Why only this,” Armstrong bared his teeth in a vicious grin. “You surrender, and we’ll let your woman go free.  She won’t even come to trial for piracy.”

“And what if I’m not interested in your little exchange?” A sneer curled the pirate captain’s lips.  “That don’t seem like a fair trade to me.  One senior naval officer, a handful of men, and a ship for a bit of a girl? Particularly since the rest of our necks are in the noose.”

The words were callous, cruel even, but Walton could feel the man who held him was quivering tense with an emotion that was not making it to his voice.

The muscles were working in Armstrong’s face.  The man was not happy about what he was doing, Walton could tell. “Don’t give me that, Sparrow,” his lieutenant barked.  “The longer you hold out, the less likely that young woman will remain in one piece.”

Captain Walton was horrified.  Since when had the Navy been dealing in female hostages like—well—like pirates?  “Captain Sparrow,” he hissed. “Please believe me, I had no idea . . .”

“Keep your mouth shut!” Sparrow snapped, his cutlass returning to Walton’s throat.  Walton shut up. 

“Now honestly, lieutenant,” Sparrow spoke with sarcastic condescension. “Are you actually expectin’ _chivalry_ from a _pirate_?”

He had been, actually, Walton realized.  They’d all heard the stories about how Sparrow had rescued the Governor’s daughter at the risk of his own life.

“I’ll tell you the truth, mate,” Sparrow continued. “Not because you deserve it, but because she does.  Anamaria is not ‘my woman.’  She belongs to nobody but herself.  She is a member of my crew, first mate on my ship, and that is all.  And if I let you use her to trap us again, she’d kill me.  Besides, I’m not so certain you have her as captured as you think you have.”  Thunder began to prowl in that voice.  “So let’s just get one thing straight before you go trying anything stupid.  I will do whatever it takes to make absolutely certain that you will never take that ship and that none of my men or women will ever hang on your gallows.   And that includes blowing the _Black Pearl_ to the depths, myself.  Surrender and your captain goes free, your crew is unharmed and your ship will be returned to you with enough sail and provisions to make port.  Which is mighty reasonable of me considering what you were planning t’ do to us if it were the other way around.”

Lieutenant Armstrong glared at the pirate holding his captain.  “You’d never fire on your ship,” he stated confidently.  The stories of Jack Sparrow and the _Black Pearl_ were even more legendary.  “I’m calling your bluff, Sparrow.  Surrender now, or my men open fire.”

“I’m not a fool, Lieutenant,” the pirate said coldly and even a touch sadly.

He turned his head towards his men on the guns, and his shout of command nearly deafened Walton.  “Fire!” 

Fire belched from cannon mouths, the guns lunged in their carriages, and cannonballs whistled across the decks of the _Black Pearl_ and through her ravaged hull. 

Walton felt each thundering shot vibrate through the man that held him captive, as though it brought Sparrow physical pain to attack his ship.

Again and again the powerful guns spoke.

Walton shuddered.  When had their perfect trap turned into such a nightmare?  He’d done everything right, but here they were in the clutches of this madman, who seemed capable of any atrocity. 

Silence and a haze of smoke descended. 

“Well, Lieutenant?” Sparrow asked mildly. “Shall I continue?”

At that moment a scream echoed from the captain’s cabin aboard the _Black Pearl_. 

The grip on Walton’s arm tightened like a vise until he thought the bone might crack.  He noticed that Armstrong also looked taken aback at the sound. A second, higher pitched scream started and refused to quit.  Walton felt the bruises forming on his arm, but he was too horrified to care.

“Go ahead, Captain Walton,” the pirate said, loudly and clearly enough to be heard over that frightful noise.  Walton marveled that his voice remained steady.  “Give the order before anyone else gets hurt. You can always chase me another day, but you can’t raise the dead, nor can you come back from it.”

The screaming stopped as abruptly as it had begun.

There was only one thing Captain Walton could honourably do at this point.  “Of course Captain Sparrow,” he said quietly.  “Gentlemen,” he raised his voice to carry across the _Black Pearl_.    “I see no other reasonable alternative.  I am surrendering the _Defender_ and this crew to Captain Sparrow, requesting that he honour his offer of mercy and offering him all assistance in the restoration of his vessel.  We are not savages.  Let us endeavor to remember that.” He met his lieutenant’s shocked gaze. “And for God’s sake, Armstrong, see that no further harm comes to that poor woman!”

“Sir, believe me, I only gave orders that she was to be guarded!” Armstrong lit out for the cabin at a run.

Walton found himself suddenly a freed man again, except for the bonds on his wrists, as the pirate captain leapt to one of the boarding planks that materialized in front of his feet barely in time to prevent him stepping off the ship into the sea.  He bounded up the jouncing narrow strip as though it were level ground.  Walton followed him, ignoring his decreased ability to balance, determined to know the worst. “I assure you, Captain Sparrow,” he growled, “the men who did this will feel the lash.”  He only hoped the pirate captain would not take matters of justice into his own hands.

Armstrong was already in the cabin, but a young pirate was bolting out the door, his face pale.  Sparrow halted him, which proved to be a mistake, as the lad threw up on the deck plates at his captain’s feet.  Walton felt sick.  What had his men done?

Sparrow, on the other hand, seemed perfectly calm. “Easy now, Requin,” he soothed. “It’s all over.  How many of them did she kill?”

Requin gulped and took a deep breath, “None, sir.”

“None?” Sparrow looked surprised and alarmed. “Either the lass has learnt patience or this is going to be even uglier than I thought.”

“Sparrow!” Walton exclaimed. “You don’t mean to tell me you think a woman has bested my men.”

“Walton,” Captain Sparrow said tiredly. “She’s not my first mate because I like the look of her face.  If your men threatened her, and she let them live, they’ll be wishin’ they were dead about now.  I’d best go see if I can detach her from visions of slaughtering the entire British Navy.”

The incredulous Walton followed the pirate into the cabin and halted in consternation.  Whatever he had expected to find, this was not it.  

In the midst of the ruined splendour of what had once been a beautiful room, on a bloodstained bed, lay a young mulatto woman, quite lovely for all of that, and quite evidently the victim of an attempted rape.  Her shirt was ripped at the neck and part of her breeches had been cut away, exposing a great deal more of warm brown curves than he needed to see after six months at sea.  What had attracted his men was immediately obvious. 

But there the comprehensibility of the scene ended. 

For all that she was suffering from a dreadful injury, the girl’s face was twisted into a snarl, and she was propped up on one elbow training one of his own men’s rifles on Lieutenant Armstrong who had his hands raised.  A gory knife lay quick to hand at her side.

On the mahogany-paneled wall near the bed, one of his marines was pinned through the shoulder by a long dagger.  The man was ashen-faced and bleeding profusely, but he tried to nod and smile at his captain.  On the spoilt rug beside the bed lay another of his men, curled up into a tight ball of agony, breathing in a high-pitched whistle. His half-clad appearance proclaimed him the culprit in the assault on this woman, his breeches bunched around his ankles.

And there was blood where a man didn’t _ever_ want to see blood.

“What did she do to him?” Walton choked.

Sparrow shook his head resignedly. He held out one hand and pantomimed a scissoring action. “Snip, snip,” he said. “Man ought to have known better.  He won’t be tryin’ _that_ again.”

Walton didn’t blame the boy who had vomited. He felt quite ill himself.  “That is barbaric!” he choked.

“Oh?” Sparrow raised an eyebrow at him. “And what he was doing to her was so _very_ civilized.  At least he’ll live.  Geldings and bullocks do all the time.  I thought she would slit his throat.” 

The pirate captain strode quite nonchalantly up to the hellcat with the rifle.  He crouched briefly to sweep up a fallen blanket. “It’s over now, Ana.  They’ve surrendered.  You can stand down.” He put out a hand and with a single finger tipped the barrel towards the deck. 

Lieutenant Armstrong heaved a relieved sigh and backed carefully away.

Then the pirate spread the wet blanket over the woman he claimed was first mate of the dreaded _Black Pearl_ , shielding her from Royal Navy eyes.  Gently, he pried her fingers off the weapon and removed it from her bloodied grasp, but he didn’t touch the knife.

Turning to frown at his new wall decoration, Captain Sparrow settled on calling for assistance.  Several burly pirates appeared, including the giant.  Together they made short and uncompassionate work of removing the two injured marines.

Captain Walton was relieved when the pirate captain indicated that they were to leave the cabin.  He didn’t think he could have endured the silent blistering hatred in that young woman’s eyes one minute longer.

* * * * *

Outside his cabin, Jack Sparrow found Peytoe observing the relocation of the offending marines to the _Defender._  The cook nodded towards the planks understandingly. “Laid a hand on the lass, din’t he?

“He did,” Jack affirmed, scowling at the disappearing Banks. 

“Missin’ some bits, in’t he?” Peytoe persisted.

“He is,” Jack agreed with some satisfaction.

“Told ye,” Peytoe nodded again, pleased with his powers of deduction and with the universe for following its own rules.

* * * * *

Anamaria _needed_ to kill something, but even the ship’s rats were surely drowned. Unfortunately, the seething violence trying to split her skin did not seem likely to find an outlet anytime soon.  It was with relief that she heard Captain Sparrow returning. 

Jack’s face appeared, peering tentatively around the doorway.  “All right if I come in, love?” he asked with unwonted gentleness.

 

“’S your cabin,” Anamaria shrugged.

 

Jack entered, his arms bundled with what she recognized was her only spare clothing.  “Thought you might like these,” he offered diffidently. But there was something ominous at the back of his eyes, like lightening flickering on the horizon.

 

Anamaria took the garments from him, searching his face for clues to the cause of that far-off storm.

For once, Jack didn’t leave her guessing.  “That waste of a marine did not . . . ,” he paused, uncharacteristically searching for his choice of words, “. . . accomplish his mission?” he finally finished.

“No,” Anamaria said shortly. She didn’t want to discuss Banks at all. “Your little firestorm interrupted his—concentration.”

“How fortunate for him,” Jack said. His fingers brushed the hilt of his cutlass, then subsided.

“I know you didn’t want bloodshed on the _Pearl_ ,” Anamaria began, not sure what she wanted to say to the captain.

“If you hadn’t,” Jack interrupted her, in the light, dry, colourless tone that always took a half-hitch around her spine, “I’d have done it myself.”

Anamaria shivered.  She wondered what Jack would have done to Banks had the man succeeded in raping her.  Then she was glad she didn’t know. There were times when Jack Sparrow could be more dangerous than any other man she’d ever met.

For a space of time measured in heartbeats, Anamaria met Jack’s unnaturally still gaze.  The breeze, stealing in through the shattered hull, the lifting and subsiding of the sea, were the only movements.

At last, Jack broke the silence before it became too burdened with the things that lay unspoken between them.  Not sure whether she was sorry or relieved, Anamaria watched the mask of the _Black Pearl_ ’s mad captain slip down over his features.

“I’m off to do a bit of shopping aboard the _Defender_ ,” Jack said, his jauntiness reanimating. “Does the lady have any requests?” He bowed grandly to her, the effect somewhat spoilt by a grimace of pain.

Glancing down at the knife she was still unaccountably clutching, Anamaria remembered Jack’s last gift giving.  She met his eyes again, her lips peeling back over a vulpine grin. “Diamonds,” she said firmly. “Diamonds will do.”

Captain Sparrow’s gaze flicked from the bloody blade to the splash of gore on the bulkhead where she’d run Hargraves through.  One eyebrow climbed under his scarf.  “Diamonds it is, love,” he said hastily and backed out the door.  “I’ll do me best!”

* * * * *

TBC


	25. Strength by Limping Sway Disabled

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> On board the Dauntless the search for the Black Pearl continues. On board the Defender, Jack Sparrow goes shopping.

Scuttlebutt aboard the _Dauntless_ had it that the old man had finally lost it.  Plumb dicked in the nob he was, the foremasters agreed in accents of profound awe. 

Lieutenant Gillette witnessed the transformation himself, entering the commodore’s wardroom to discover his commanding officer scowling at an untidy stack of charts on the table. He cleared his throat, and Commodore Norrington glanced up, the annoyed frown creasing his normally smooth features shifting like a fresh wind into a welcoming smile.

“Lieutenant Gillette!” the commodore exclaimed. “Just the man I need.” He pushed the charts towards his first officer. “Tell me, Andrew, where is Jack Sparrow at this moment?”

“Sir?” Startled and incredulous, Gillette stared at the commodore, trying to decipher what was obviously a rare and disturbing jest.  When Norrington continued to look both expectant and completely serious, the lieutenant glanced down on the charts, hoping for further enlightenment. 

He saw that Commodore Norrington had meticulously plotted the battle with the _Black Pearl_ from the moment of their first sighting her to the moment when she had last disappeared into the gloom of storm and night.  Interspersed with the charts of surrounding seas and islands were pages of data gleaned from previous encounters with Sparrow’s ship by the _Dauntless_ and others, including her estimated rates of speed and headings in various winds and weather.

Realizing that if his answer to the commodore was to have any meaning, he would have to master the whole collection of materials as Norrington appeared to have done, Gillette reached for a chair and settled himself at the table in silence.

Over an hour later, he looked up to see the commodore gazing out the cabin windows. 

As if sensing his lieutenant’s eyes on him, Norrington turned and raised a querying eyebrow. “Well?” he asked expectantly.

Unsure just what his commanding officer required of him, Gillette shrugged.  “It is all just speculation, of course, sir.  If even one of my assumptions is incorrect, we would be searching an entirely wrong area.  However, given that Sparrow’s ship was scarcely sea-worthy when last we saw her, his object must be to put as much distance between himself and us as possible, under cover of night and storm, before he is forced to lay up for repairs or risk her going down under him.  Evidence indicates that Sparrow has always been able to get more out of that ship than conditions would warrant, so I am being generous with my estimation of how far she might have traveled.  Given the weather and seas last night, I would judge that the _Black Pearl_ must have made it at least this far,” he indicated a point on a chart that did indeed strain credulity, “and possibly Sparrow could have driven her as far as this.” 

The space to which he pointed was clearly impossible, but neither officer blinked at it. 

Circling his index finger around a significant portion of sea, Gillette concluded, “I would propose this as the likeliest area to search.”

Norrington nodded thoughtfully. “Good work, Lieutenant. I concur with your deductions. Now,” his eyes flashed challengingly, “tell me where Jack Sparrow is least likely to be, given the same conditions and an equivalent estimate of the _Black Pearl_ ’s abilities.”

Baffled, Gillette bent his mind to the new project.  In the end, the answer was not as difficult as it had appeared. “Here, sir.” He indicated an area far to the west of his first suggestion.  “There is no chance of harbour to speak of, the winds are unreliable, and the currents are chancy, and it is not an area Sparrow has been known to frequent.”

“Excellent!” Commodore Norrington laughed. “Perfect.  You have been of inestimable assistance, Andrew! Now,” his grin grew maniacal, “plot me a course to Jack Sparrow’s least likely location immediately.  And order the _Dauntless_ to come about.”

* * * * *

Commodore Norrington knew that his men considered him crazy for conceiving this latest plan.  And perhaps he was, he acknowledged to the internal court martial regularly summoned by his mind to convene hearings on his various dealings with Jack Sparrow.  However—he argued to that august and disapproving body of imaginary gold braid—flawless logic, back-breaking labour, consummate craft, even serpentine guile had availed him nothing. The notorious Sparrow and his cursed ship could scarcely ever be located, and when the Royal Navy did succeed in encountering the _Black Pearl,_ the pirate captain always managed to maneuver Norrington’s ships into untenable positions for pursuit—into unexpected opposing currents or unpredictable storms or unfavourable shifts in the wind or even into dead lulls. The results were always the same: the  _Black Pearl_ would curvet gracefully away from her captors in a flurry of insulting stern fire, kick up her heels with a saucy flirt of charcoal sails, and vanish over the horizon.

Whether or not her hull could hold out water or her sails hold in the wind appeared to be irrelevant to the final outcome.

The conclusion was obvious:  the only way to catch a madman was to join him in his insanity.

Mentally thumbing his nose at the bewigged, bespectacled heads glaring at him in his brain and feeling absurdly cheerful in spite of the fine mist laying siege to his collar with some success, Norrington prowled the quarterdeck in the dismal twilight keeping the crew on watch in a dither lest their obedience to his strange orders seem less than fully enthusiastic and thus merit his disapprobation.

The appearance of the doctor, clumping up the companionway, his expression distraught, interrupted the commodore in mid-stride.   

“What is it, Gil?” Norrington inquired, his pleasant mood trickling coldly away. 

“I’ve lost him, James,” Samuels said in disbelief, raising his hands in a gesture of helplessness. 

Norrington had never heard quite that tone in the doctor’s voice before. A sickening and surprising sorrow swept over him like a rogue sea.  “Not the little lad, Jip?” he asked, laying a comforting if cautious hand on his old friend’s arm. Gil was always surly and thin-skinned when he’d lost a patient.

“No, not what you’re imagining.” The doctor shook his head in frustrated denial. “At least, I don’t think so . . .” his voice trailed off.

When he didn’t immediately enlighten the commodore, Norrington abandoned sympathy in favour of exasperation. “Gilbert Samuels, make sense!” he ordered, accompanying the command with a brisk shake.

“I mean I’ve _really_ lost him!” the doctor explained in bewilderment. “As in misplaced, mislaid, can’t find him, don’t know where he is. Lost!”

“How could you . . .?” Norrington thought better of the query and rephrased it more diplomatically. “How could he have gone anywhere?”

“I don’t bloody know!” Samuels exclaimed. “I would have said it was impossible.  He’s still feverish, he’s missing a newly amputated leg, and I could have sworn I’d poured enough rum down him to capsize a child that size.  But I leave him sleeping like the righteous, and when I return, he’s disappeared.  I’ve looked, but he’s nowhere to be found.”

Commodore Norrington felt a headache beginning to grumble on his horizon.

“You don’t suppose he’s jumped overboard?” Samuels put words to his troubling suspicion.

“Of course not!” Norrington snapped more shortly than he’d intended, remembering Jip turning his own knife on himself. “Get some of the men to help you search this ship from stem to stern. Surely he cannot be that difficult to locate.”

However, though they combed the _Dauntless_ from bowsprit to taffrail and poop deck to bilges throughout the night, not one sign of Samuels’ missing patient did they discover.  All the ship’s boats were present and accounted for, so if Jip had managed to depart the _Dauntless_ he must indeed have done so fatally.

* * * * *

No matter how desperately his mind tried to track its way out of the labyrinth of disaster in which the _Defender_ was now lost, Captain Walton kept returning to the stomach-sinking realization that none of the past day would ever go away.  He could not turn it aside with fist-clenched disbelief nor with tightly shut eyes nor with any other means of denial he tried, and he had tried them all.  But always he was brutally wrenched back to the reality—his lovely ship was in the hands of pirates, his crew bound and made prisoner. Their faces, varying in degrees of rage and terror as they were dragged roughly below decks, haunted the backs of his eyelids, mutely accusing.

His actions had brought them to this. 

Over and over his tormented thoughts sought for the one moment at which everything had gone wrong, the one false step that had plunged him off the path and into the briers.  It was inconceivable that Jack Sparrow should not only have flown the trap set for him but also have turned it on its own perpetrators—and yet the man had done it.

A grudging respect for the pirate captain trickled amongst the great currents of hatred and disdain that swept through Walton’s unquiet breast.

At his most honest and bleakest moments he could admit that he had been outmaneuvered by a consummate strategist with greater craft and determination than he possessed.  Jack Sparrow had taken the _Defender_ as an eagle takes a fish—by sovereignty of nature. 

The fact that his loss to the elusive pirate also placed him in an elite and rather numerous company was no comfort at all.

In addition, the thrice-damned villain possessed an absolutely vile sense of humour accompanied by a stranglehold grasp of irony.  It had amused Captain Sparrow to allow his vanquished opponent to remain un-incarcerated while his ship was ransacked.  Propelled along by assorted pirates variously violent, his hands uncomfortably bound behind him, his hip a red revolt of pain, Captain Walton stumbled, heartsick, after Jack Sparrow, forced to watch as the pirates cannibalized his beloved _Defender._

The pirate captain sauntered through Walton’s ship like a housewife on a shopping expedition at a particularly fine market.  Anything that could conceivably be used in the restoration of the _Black Pearl_ was pounced upon with delight.  It soon became obvious that the pirates would leave the little brig scarcely more than a shell. Bulkheads, canvas, spars, rigging, tackle, powder and shot, weapons, water, food, even the scanty personal possessions of his crew all fell prey, over the course of the day, to the voracious locusts under Sparrow’s direction. 

The naval captain had to grind his teeth on his growing wrath to keep from blurting out any word that might inspire the wretched brigand to besmirch his problematic honour and order the _Defender’_ s crew put to the sword so that he might finish his plundering in peace.

Sparrow seemed particularly charmed by Captain Walton’s bed. He ran a tar-stained, much be-ringed hand over the clean linens and poked an exploratory finger at the mattress, making a pleased little humming noise—exactly like a contented wasp, Walton thought bitterly.  Leaning over, the pirate captain sniffed heartily a couple of times, then straightened with difficulty and beamed into his unwilling host’s face.

“I must congratulate you on maintaining such first rate sleeping accommodations, mate,” Sparrow said warmly to the naval captain.  “And I thank you kindly for keeping them so hygienic, as it were.” He patted the cover with approval.  “My own bed has been the site of a few too many surgeries and one too many assaults this day.  In this instance, I believe the victor will generously allow the loser to have the spoils, and I will transfer this thoroughly unspoilt mattress to the _Pearl_ —a plan remarkable for its perspicuity, wouldn’t you say, Captain Walton?”

As he pantomimed the proposed trade, the pirate’s grin had too many teeth in it for the pleasant tone, so Walton held his tongue and restrained himself to a short tip of the head. He reminded himself sternly that if Jack Sparrow chose to exact his revenge by needling the captain of the _Defender_ into a frothing and futile rage, that was a small price to pay for the safety of his men.

“Tearlach!” Sparrow bellowed, turning and practically bumping into the chest of the silent giant who still trailed behind him, head bowed in the tight space.

“Oh, there you are.” The pirate reduced his volume slightly.  “For a man the size of a mountain, you certainly are hard to keep track of.  Can’t you make the least little bit of noise?”

The large man shrugged and obediently shuffled his feet on the deck.

Sparrow’s genuine smile flashed, and he waved an incongruously elegant hand in the direction of the bed.  “If you would be so kind?”

The enormous crewman nodded carefully and, still stooping, picked up the mattress, bedding and all, as though it were a mere cushion, and wrestled the mass out the cabin door.

His place at Sparrow’s back was immediately taken by an equally silent, elderly pirate on whose shoulder perched a colourful parrot that glared balefully at Walton and occasionally snapped its beak with a fierce click.

If it had not seemed so very unlikely as to be impossible, Walton would have said that Jack Sparrow was being hovered over by several of his crew, rather as if he were a wandersome chick and they great, raggedy, ungainly hens attempting with no success to herd him to some more sheltered roost.

The impression strengthened when his egregious escort abruptly about-faced and all but dragged Walton back out through the door they had just entered.  But not before he had seen Sparrow brought to his knees on the hard deck by a wracking spasm of coughing.  The hens converged on their charge, clucking in consternation and hiding him from Walton’s craning backward looks. 

Apparently the pirate was more badly injured than he wished to reveal to his enemy, for the two barbarians, who, Walton was prepared to swear, breakfasted on infants and picked their teeth with the bones, kept casting ineptly surreptitious, anxious glances behind them as they hustled their captive out of sight and earshot of their captain’s weakness.

Their relief was palpable when Sparrow reappeared, his impervious façade slightly marred by the lines engraving themselves deeper beside his tight mouth and the tinge of pallor under his tanned skinned.  Walton suspected the comradely arm on which the pirate captain was leaning was more a necessity than an affectation.

There was a loyalty among these men, he observed, wonderingly.  He had not expected to find such virtue amidst pirates.  In fact, a great many of his assumptions about these wolves of the sea were coming under fire this day.

In truth, apart from his treatment of Walton, Jack Sparrow showed himself remarkably compassionate towards his captured enemies.  Somehow, the man seemed to be holding in tenuous check the ferocious rage Walton saw blazing in the eyes of every pirate who looked at him.  However, occasionally that control slipped.  Observing several members of his crew turning against one of their helpless captives, Sparrow had ordered the offenders back to the _Black Pearl_ , and Walton never saw them on his ship again.

When Walton realized in horror that the entire stock of food and water had been removed from the _Defender_ , visions of long and ghastly starvation crowding his mind, he was relieved to see Sparrow verbally stripping the culprits down to the bone for their error.  Later, those same miscreants could be seen sheepishly returning a reasonable portion of their stolen goods.

Perhaps the most surprising incident was when one of the pirates assigned to guard the naval prisoners brought a request from the _Defender_ ’s surgeon that he be allowed his supplies and equipment to attend those wounded in the battle for their ship.  Captain Sparrow granted the request immediately and unconditionally but inquired whether, when the surgeon had seen to his own men to his satisfaction, he might offer his services to those of the _Pearl’_ s crew injured during the previous days’ encounters. 

Walton awaited the outcome with trepidation. He had no doubt that his surgeon would refuse to assist the pirates.  The man had a hatred of the breed that surpassed anything the naval captain had ever seen.  Patching up criminals and gallows bait would go against everything the good doctor held dear. 

Captain Walton had not misjudged his man.  When the emphatic response that the naval surgeon would fry in hell before he prolonged the life of any such “spawn of Satan” for a single minute was reported to Sparrow, the pirate captain’s mobile face went still as a snake poised to strike, but he merely nodded and said in tones that could freeze hot blood, “I see. Very well then. We shall contrive on our own.” 

Fearing that the doctor’s principles had overwhelmed his prudence, Walton attempted to intercede for him. 

Sparrow’s lip curled in scorn, but whether at Walton or his obdurate surgeon remained unclear.  “What do you think I’m going to do to him?  Filet him with his own scalpels?  Men like that attract their own retribution, eventually.” He turned away and resumed his patrol of the _Defender._  

For once Walton was not unwilling to be herded after him.  He wanted to hear what this unusual man had to say next. 

“There’s no law says he has to love us, is there now?” The pirate shrugged.  “And in the end, what difference is there between a man who’ll order a cannon fired at your head and one who’ll stand there, bandage in hand, and watch you bleed to death?”  Sparrow tossed a raised-brow glance over his shoulder.  “I’d just as soon none of mine be treated by a creature that desires nothing more than their demise.  Your surgeon could have done me more harm had he been a less honest man.”

Such forbearance was little short of astonishing.  Captain Walton couldn’t help wondering what had driven a man such as Jack Sparrow into a life of piracy.

* * * * *

Captain Sparrow did not sleep that night, vibrating back and forth between the two ships overseeing the transfer of loot and the repairs to his vessel.  While Walton’s presence served no useful purpose, he was forced to remain awake as well, propelled hither and yon aboard his ship as various items were stripped from the _Defender_ and sent on their way to the _Black Pearl._  

Near staggering with fatigue and pain, Captain Walton saw the disintegration of his slender, sky-raking _Defender_ with hot-eyed, throat-tightened grief.  Believing himself unobserved in the predawn gloom, he leaned heavily against the sturdy comfort of one of her ribs, resting his cheek against the rough-hewn timber, and whispered his apology for failing to keep her safe from such a fate.

Looking up, he was startled to realize that Jack Sparrow was watching him, an expression akin to sympathy in his dark, shadowed eyes.

At times, Walton felt the whole nightmare would have been easier to endure if he could have continued to view the pirate captain with unalloyed hatred.

* * * * *

As the eastern sky began casting out lures to the coming dawn, Commodore Norrington’s hope that they would find their missing pirate aboard the _Dauntless_ went down for the last time and refused to resurface.  His mind insisted on bringing up the image of a child left behind in the gathering night, alone on the deadly sea, leagues from any land, watching life and light sail away on the white wings of a tall ship.  Had he regretted his choice at the last? Perhaps called for help, unheard? 

No.  The corner of the commodore’s mouth tilted in a sad half-smile. If the little firebrand they’d plucked from the sea had chosen to divest the Royal Navy of its prey, he would have gone to that fate with the same spirit and fortitude with which he had endured his amputation—and cursed them all roundly as he did so.

Norrington found himself wandering towards the surgery where he discovered a woebegone Samuels straightening his already immaculate tools.  To the momentary glimmer of hope in the doctor’s uplifted glance the commodore shook his head fractionally.

“I’m calling off the search, Gil,” he said quietly.

The light quenched, and the doctor sighed.  “So he’s really no longer aboard?”

“So it would appear,” Norrington said regretfully. “Even the other lads didn’t find him in any of their impossible hiding places.”

Samuels scowled at the retractor he was holding. “I wish he could have believed . . . “

His words were interrupted by Bailey bounding into the surgery, his wide white smile splitting his dark face.  “They find him, doctor!  The li’l pirate! In the fo’c’sle!”

The words transformed the doctor.

“Now that is excellent news,” Samuels beamed, thumping his assistant on the back hard enough to remove the air from his lungs. 

In an excess of good spirits, Bailey threw his arms around the doctor.  Not satisfied with the single hug, he turned on the commodore.  Too startled to object, Norrington found himself being embraced by the overly enthusiastic crewman.  But the commodore was neither given the time nor had he the heart to chastise the man for the familiarity.

Bailey was already tugging on the doctor’s arm.  “Hurry, doctor. The li’l boy, he don’t look too good.”

Exiting the surgery, the men headed for the forecastle at a pace that perilously resembled an undignified trot, Bailey ranging ahead of the two officers and circling back in his eagerness.

The small crowd clustered in the narrow passage between the berths in the forecastle parted smartly to allow the commodore and doctor through.  The watch had just changed, so none of the men had yet turned in.  The object of their interest appeared to have wedged himself into the tiny space between a sea chest and the hull of the ship.

“I swear I laid me glims on that there chest just ‘alf a minute past,” a burly foremaster was proclaiming loudly.  “An’ ‘e warn’t there.  I jist nipped over t’ the ‘ead for a bit of a piss. An’ back I comes; an’ there ‘e is!”

Jip lay curled behind the large chest like a fallen cherub, his mop of gold hair matted with dirt, his clothing encrusted with all manner of filth, apparently unaware of the commotion surrounding him. 

He roused briefly, when he was carefully pried out of his hiding place, to murmur, “Have you found my ship?”

“No, we have not,” Norrington told him.

“Good.” A small smile hovered on his lips, whisked away, and then Jip was unconscious again.

“Move out of my way you great lummox,” Samuels growled, elbowing the commodore aside.

“That is Commodore Lummox, to you,” Norrington remonstrated mildly.  “At least counterfeit some respect if you have it not.” 

The good doctor had never been able to see rank as anything more than a mass hallucination of the Royal Navy, but he generally humoured the delusional men with whom he served.  However, whenever his medical instincts were roused, all divisions and gradations of men vanished from his mind without a trace. The commodore’s only evidence that his chiding had been heard was a preoccupied grunt. 

Resigning himself to gross insubordination until Samuels had treated his errant patient, Norrington asked, “Where do you suppose he has been all this time?”

“Certainly not just hiding somewhere quietly.  Look at this.” The doctor lifted one of Jip’s hands, revealing the calloused palm broken-blistered and bleeding.  “And he’s been crawling quite some distance,” Samuels added, pointing to Jip’s bruised and scraped knees making their way into the world through his torn breeches.  The filthy bandage covering his amputation glistened with bright, fresh blood.  “He looks like hell,” the doctor finished cheerfully, “but there’s nothing wrong with him that time and rest won’t cure.  His fever’s all but gone, now.  He’s just thoroughly exhausted.”

Norrington frowned as Samuels and Bailey prepared to transport Jip back to his quarters in the surgery.  Just what, exactly, had their little conundrum been up to that had left him in such a state?  No good, that was assured.

“One minute.” He forestalled Bailey lifting the lad.  “Search him for weapons.”

Samuels shot him an outraged look, but Norrington snapped. “Do it!” 

Even the doctor gave way when that note appeared in the commodore’s voice. He nodded to Bailey, and his assistant rifled through Jip’s scant garments. 

Only Norrington was unsurprised when the investigation revealed that Jip was once again in possession of the knife he’d brought aboard the _Dauntless._   Wordlessly, Bailey handed it to the commodore.

As Bailey began trundling the oblivious Jip back towards the surgery, Norrington turned the elegantly shaped, well-worn blade in his hands.  Just what had the boy planned to do with that knife? Or had he already done it?

At the door of the surgery, Norrington delayed Samuels with a hand on his arm.  “Keep a better eye on him, Gil,” he suggested.

Samuels grinned wryly.  “I promise, either Bailey or I will always be in the room with him.  He won’t be able to wander off again.  In fact, I predict he’ll sleep for vast tracts of time before he awakens full of the Old Scratch.”

Privately, Norrington was convinced that Jip was already as full of the devil as he could hold, waking or sleeping.

Not a watch later, the commodore’s conviction was vindicated and the doctor’s reputation as a prophet lay in tatters.  A sheepish Samuels reported to his commanding officer that their captive pirate was once again at large.

“I swear, he simply evaporated from under our noses,” the doctor complained. “I didn’t take my eyes off him.”

On a whim, Norrington felt his pocket where he’d absent-mindedly slipped Jip’s knife.  As he’d half expected, it was gone.

Resignedly, he ordered the hunt for Jip resumed.  After a brief moment spent considering just what a pirate the size of a bar of soap after a hard day’s wash might consider doing to interfere with the operation of a first rate Royal Navy warship, Norrington also ordered a watch set on the rudder chain and doubled the watch on the powder room.

The hunt was unsuccessful.  The rudder chain and the powder remained unmolested.

Jip simply reappeared, hours later, sleeping in the hammock from which he’d vanished, as though his absence had merely been a figment of their corporate imaginations—except that he looked even more exhausted and filthy, if it were possible.  His knife was not on his raggedy person.

His whereabouts and activities while he was gone remained a mystery.  Jip merely looked blankly uncomprehending when questioned, as though the fact that he had been out of the room at all was news to him.

Commodore Norrington was not deceived by the innocent act.  That a child might stray in delirium—possibly so.  But that he should be impossible to locate and should pick the commodore’s own pocket under such circumstances—impossible.  And yet they had no evidence that Jip had been up to anything subversive.

Pondering whether or not to solve his dilemma by locking the boy in the brig, Norrington decided on a compromise until he had a definite accusation.

“I’m sending you someone to help you keep an eye on him,” Norrington informed the doctor.  “Two someones, in fact.  Misters Murtogg and Mulroy could use something to keep them busy, and they have a certain amount of experience herding pirates.”

Having disposed of the problem of Jip for the nonce, Norrington returned to pacing the quarterdeck.  The _Dauntless_ was beginning to object to the course she was held to.  Never at her best in fretful winds, she seemed sluggish and out of temper. His lady always had preferred her weather and seas to be ideal, circumstances he could seldom give her when pursuing Jack Sparrow, and particularly not on this, his latest wild throw of the dice.  The currents in this part of the Caribbean were indeed vexing. 

It was, Commodore Norrington thought bitterly, perfect Sparrow territory.  If that miscreant wasn’t here, it was certainly his fault that Norrington was.  All that was missing were hidden shoals.  Perhaps Sparrow was busy arranging for them to be imported. 

To add to the niggling difficulties of the day, his ship had apparently sprung a seam during the storm and her pumps had been required twice now.  So far the ship’s carpenter had been unable to locate the leak, let alone patch it with oakum and tar. 

It was shaping up to be a classic Sparrow hunt, indeed.  Norrington hoped that, wherever he was, Jack Sparrow was having a close brush with hell.

* * * * *

TBC


	26. She That You Wrong'd, Look You Restore

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> On board the Dauntless the search for the Black Pearl continues, but has Norrington’s ship acquired a curse? Perhaps a small one. On board the Pearl, repairs continue.

Contrary to Captain Walton’s fervent hopes and badgering of Deity, the day dawned bright turquoise and gold.  Apparently the fickle weather had transferred its affections to Sparrow.  The pirates of the _Black Pearl_ would have no difficulty moving the _Defender’_ s powder to their ship safe and dry. Already a steady stream of kegs was flowing over the planks joining the two ships. 

Knowing the extent of his own fatigue, Walton could only watch the flurry of activity on the _Black Pearl_ with reluctant admiration.  The chanteys sung by the men turning the capstan to raise her masts had a breathless quality to them, as though the voices singing had almost lost the strength to do so.  He could see that many of the pirates were suffering injuries inflicted during the Naval bombardment, and yet they persevered. 

Their dogged and courageous efforts were paying off.  Restored by her crew’s devotion, the _Black Pearl_ was looking less like a ghost hulk and more like a living ship.

Walton was reminded of the old saying: “Give a seaman a knife and a forest, and he can build and rig a ship.”  In the absence of land and resources, the pirates were making his _Defender_ their forest.  The _Pearl’_ s hull no longer resembled badly tatted lace but was instead a patchwork of black planks interspersed with the warm golden oak that had once formed the bulkheads of his own ship. 

The pirates understood too well a sailor’s first rule—keep the sea out of the ship. 

Two of the _Defender’_ s own pumps had been pressed into service to take over for the much mended and cobbled together ruins of the _Pearl’_ s pumps.  As a result, she was riding higher in the water, towering over his own little brig, lean and tall-sparred, a queen among vessels.

Throughout the maelstrom of striving activity, Captain Jack Sparrow, Nemesis of the Royal Navy in general and Captain Alexander Walton in particular, stalked, directing, threatening, cajoling, calming, out-roaring the wind—as if he were creating his ship anew with the words of his mouth.  Against all odds, the pirate had succeeded in resurrecting his ship from her watery grave. 

On the other hand, Walton himself had failed his own charge.  In a brief moment of respite, while Sparrow wandered off to check on his first mate, Walton leaned wearily against the rail of the _Black Pearl_ and contemplated his beloved _Defender._ A playful breeze stirred the remnants of her rigging.  She looked naked in the merciless light, a maiden ravished, all her spars and sails struck except for her main masts and courses.  The glare of the sea stung Walton’s eyes until his vision blurred.

* * * * *

The arrival of Captain Sparrow’s new bed had afforded Anamaria the opportunity of returning to her own quarters once again in the arms of the imperturbable Tearlach.  Now she lay ensconced on her bed, a little the worse for its submersion and with a musty, damp odour to it. Her injured leg was propped up on a wilted cushion. 

Outside the cabin, the ship rang with the sounds of the repaired forge and the carpenter’s hammers and adzes as the crew raced to get the _Black Pearl_ seaworthy.  She could hear Jack’s voice rising above the din, deceptively strong, directing the placement of the easing-guys and jiggers for swaying the topmast up the main mast.

The enforced inactivity was crawling under Anamaria’s skin like ants.  She was nearly driven to distraction by their prickly little legs of boredom. Jack took one look at her that morning and set about removing all sharp or explodable objects from her cabin in a conspicuous and clanking armload.

“No use temptin’ fate,” he informed her without contrition as he fished a cutlass out from under her mattress.  “You’re startin’ t’ look like a panther in a flour sack—all claws and snarl.”

He didn’t try to dodge her slap, merely braced himself, head turned slightly, as though to make it easier for her. 

Anamaria pulled her punch.  When her hand connected with the side of his face, all the force had dissipated from her anger and the blow.  Her touch was as light and glancing as a gust of wind.

“You don’t have t’ do that, Jack,” she said sadly.

“Do what?”

“Try to make me feel better by lettin’ me hit you,” she answered. “It’s not your fault I’m goin’ crazy.  I’m sorry I’m in such a foul mood.”  

Now Jack really did look worried.  “Are you feelin’ quite the thing, love?” he asked, pressing the cool dry backs of his fingers against her forehead. “I think that fever must be gettin’ worse.  No other explanation for it.”

Anamaria knew she was feverish.  Her head felt as though the Royal Navy was performing live fire exercises in it, and her whole body ached as though she’d been pitched off the foretop and bounced down every single step of the companionway. 

“Let me take a look at that leg,” Jack suggested, his tone light but his expression grim.

He probably should, Anamaria conceded.  Her leg felt tight, as though her skin was too small and the stitches were straining impossibly to hold it together.  A small, persistent needle of fear stabbed at the back of her mind reminding her that she might yet lose the limb—if she survived at all— but neither she nor Jack put that possibility into words.

Gritting her teeth, Anamaria endured the removal of her bandages and lint—or at least the lint that hadn’t fused itself to the suppurating wound. She was certain Jack was trying to be gentle, but he might as well have been chiseling away the encrusted material with a marlinspike.

Finally, the last piece that would consent to do so parted company with her leg. Her breath, that she discovered she’d been holding, let out in a hiss of suppressed agony. 

“Sorry, love,” Jack murmured contritely. “No easy way around this.”  His hands were cold as he examined the swollen flesh, angry and inflamed, even uglier than it had looked the day before.

Jack frowned at her leg; however, his voice was relieved when he informed her, “That’s good. It’s still fightin’, not dead. I’ll send Peytoe with fresh bandages and oil to soften that glued on lint.  At least our dispensary has been resupplied courtesy of His Majesty’s Royal Navy.  When that’s healed a little more, we’ve got plenty of basilicum for the inflammation.”

A small sigh escaped Anamaria as he allowed her leg to return to its cushion.  The tension ebbed from her body. 

“You rest now,” Jack advised. “That’s the best thing for it.”

Anamaria scowled at him. “I’m so bloody tired of restin’, I could just kill somethin’,” she informed him bitterly. 

“I know.” Jack glanced meaningfully at the cutlass waiting on the deck. “Now I’ll just be off with this, someplace far away.” 

At the door, he looked back.  “I’ll send you a book,” he promised.

Anamaria huffed a resigned laugh.  Perhaps trying to decipher words _would_ take her mind off her excruciating boredom.

* * * * *

In the surgery, aboard the _Dauntless,_ Gilbert Samuels’ pirate patient was looking less and less wounded and fragile and more like a professional success by the moment, a fact which both pleased and worried the doctor.  If he and Bailey had been unable to contain the slippery little rogue when he was burnt to the socket, how were they to manage this increasingly lively young imp?  Someone had modified a crutch to fit his small stature which aggravated his nuisance potential considerably. Hopping about like a flea, Jip had explored the surgery thoroughly, extorting explanations for every instrument, unguent and piece of lint. 

Samuels had caught him heading for the door several times already.  The last time, he’d almost missed the little varmint.  Thus, he welcomed with relief the arrival of the two sturdy marines, Murtogg and Mullroy.

“Gentlemen,” the doctor said genially, “he’s all yours.”  He looked sternly down at the youngster. “Jip, these are Misters Murtogg and Mullroy.  You are to obey them in all things.  Do you understand?”

Jip stared measuringly up at his new guardians, then gave them a charmingly disarming smile, “Yes, sir.  I understand.” 

By this time Samuels was heartily suspicious of anything Jip did, particularly anything he did willingly, but Murtogg and Mullroy grinned back at the boy, unsuspecting.

Settling back to his work, Samuels kept an eye on the proceedings.  Apparently the marines had decided that a game would keep their injured charge amused and too occupied to contemplate escape. However their first suggestion, Chuck-farthing, was met with incredulous scorn by Jip. Flicking buttons into a tankard was poor sport for a pirate.  Spillikins suffered a similar dismissal.  Did they think he was a baby to play with sticks?  Surely a first rate naval ship could afford more action than that. Jip would rather help Bailey roll bandages.

Having exhausted their memories of juvenile entertainment, Murtogg and Mullroy were left with no wind to their sails.  Taking pity on them, Samuels intervened, asking Jip what game he would like to play.

“Have you any dice or cards?” Jip inquired with renewed interest.

Murtogg informed him that these were indeed available, and Mullroy was sent to fetch them.

When he returned, and the three of them were seated at the surgery table, the marines turned to Jip to name the play. 

“French Hazard,” Jip declared, sweeping up the dice.

Samuels raised an eyebrow, and Murtogg and Mullroy looked startled.  Not a child’s game indeed!

“Now, gentlemen,” Jip said smoothly. “What are the stakes?”

“I’ve got fish you can use,” Samuels offered, dropping on the table a handful of the little metal counters employed when gaming without money.

Jip curled his lip contemptuously.  “It’s not a real game if there aren’t real stakes,” he insisted.

“How do you expect to raise the wind with your pockets entirely to let?” asked Murtogg, highly amused.

“You lay down your blunt, and I’ll bet an entire watch during which I don’t escape,” Jip told the marines.

They had to argue strenuously to keep from playing for pound points.  Penny points were still rather tame for Jip, but Murtogg and Mullroy finally convinced him that a marine’s pay was such as to prevent them from playing very deep.  However, Jip didn’t consider such petty stakes worth more than the time between bells on his part. 

With the technical details worked out, the three began their game. Jip was the first caster.

As the game progressed, their captive pirate appeared to be in no danger of having to abandon his errant ways. He was also well on his way to acquiring a marine’s salary.  In fact, Samuels was certain their diminutive gambler had all the makings of a regular sharper.  In a game supposed to be based on pure luck, he was consistently nicking his main and getting his chance.

Eventually, Murtogg and Mullroy reached the same conclusion.

“You!” exclaimed Murtogg accusingly. “You are cheating, you little rat!”

Jip stared at him with wide blue uncomprehending eyes, but the two marines were rapidly joining the ranks of those who found an innocent Jip to be a contradiction in terms.

“No man of honour would ever cheat,” Mullroy told Jip sternly.

“But I’m not a man of honour,” Jip pointed out. “I’m a pirate.” 

“Even a pirate should be honourable,” Mullroy insisted.

Murtogg looked at him incredulously. “No they’re not.  Pirates are scoundrels and thieves.  That’s not honourable.”

“Cheating at dice is different,” said Mullroy stubbornly.  “Even pirates wouldn’t stoop that low.”

“A pirate is already lower than that” was Murtogg’s opinion.

The argument persisted about whether or not a man who chose a life of piracy could have any honour to lose when gambling. 

Gradually, Samuels became aware that only two voices were continuing the dispute.  Hurrying back into the room, he was unsurprised to discover just the two marines.  Of their putative prisoner not one gold hair remained—nor any of his winnings.

“Where is Jip?” he asked them. 

Murtogg and Mullroy stared around wildly.

“He was right here just a moment ago!” exclaimed Murtogg. “We were looking right at him.  How did he do that?”

The two marines rushed off to renew the pirate hunt. 

Samuels sighed and returned to his task.  They would see Jip when he was ready to be seen and not a moment before.  Of that he was comfortably certain.

* * * * *

Although Captain Sparrow had so many tasks to attend to in the restoration of his _Pearl_ that he wished he were triplets _,_ he made the detour to Anamaria’s cabin as often as he could.  The next time he looked in on her, Jack found her restless and thirsty.  When he returned with a flagon of fresh rainwater, his feverish first mate drank the whole of it without once drawing a breath. It took two more trips to satisfy her lust for liquid.

“I’ll just have the entire barricoe installed in your cabin,” he offered, only half in jest.

Anamaria wiped her mouth with the back of one wrist. “Thank you,” she said with feeling. “I was about to go up in flames.”

“Can I get you anything else?” he offered solicitously. 

Anamaria considered. “No,” she said.

But as he turned to go, she added, “Yes. Yes there is.”

When she didn’t enlighten him further, Jack prompted her uneasily, “What is it, love?” His first mate was looking uncomfortable, and warning bells were beginning to toll at the back of his head. 

“I think I might need to use that chamberpot again,” Anamaria said all in a rush.

Jack considered—very briefly—going through that ordeal a second time.   He had refined the ability to ignore his body’s objections to anything he chose to do to a high art; however, his ribs had held trial and passed judgment on his activity so far and were now busy executing the sentence to draw and quarter him, or so it seemed.

Against his will, he groaned. “No, Ana. I can’t. Just . . . you’ll have to . . . .” His weary brain refused to disgorge a solution, abandoning him to plead, “I don’t know . . . I just can’t.”

But somewhere in the intervening time since their first tragicomic bout with that chamberpot, Anamaria had come to an accord with her own helplessness and had keel-hauled her shame. “That’s all right, Jack. I wouldn’t ask it of you,” she reassured him. “Just send me some able-bodied help.  Tearlach and . . . Requin.”

“Requin?” Jack was startled. He’d sent Requin to keep Anamaria company during the taking of the _Defender,_ even though he’d known that the boy was terrified of Anamaria and that Anamaria considered Requin a less than competent pirate, because he’d had no one else to choose.  Apparently their shared ordeal had established some kind of truce between the two of them.  If Anamaria would accept Requin in his place, Jack and his ribs could only be immensely relieved.

“The boy keeps his head.” Anamaria shrugged. “If he hadn’t got his hands on Banks’ gun when you fired at The _Pearl_ . . . things might not have gone so well.”

Jack raised a brow.  Now that was interesting.  He opened his mouth to inquire further, but Anamaria had pinned her lips as though she’d already said more than she’d planned.  Never mind.  He’d have the story out of Requin later. 

“Now go!” Anamaria ordered with conviction.  “Hurry!”

Jack went and stood not upon the order of his going.

He found Tearlach quickly enough, towering above the rest of his crewmates at the capstan.  The big man received with his usual unruffled calm the news that he was once again required to assist the first mate with private matters.   Jack sent him to collect the chair, the chamber pot, and the dress from the captain’s cabin.

Finding Requin took more inquiry, but Jack eventually located him assisting Peytoe with the injured.  Upon hearing the task his captain intended for him, Requin flushed a bashful crimson then turned pale with terror, a phenomenon that Jack found highly diverting. 

He wondered if he’d have a harder time talking Requin into this duty than he had up the mast after the _Pearl’_ s capsize. 

“Anamaria chose you because she trusts you, lad,” he said reassuringly.  “You just follow her directions, and I promise you’ll make it through alive and in one piece.” 

Requin did not appear to be reassured.

Jack tried a different tack.  “The lady is in distress.  I’d assist her myself, but . . .” he gestured at his ribs.  “So I’m counting on you to be a gentleman and do your best to make this as easy for her as possible.  You’re a good man, Requin.  I knew that when I signed you on this crew.  I know you can do this.”

While Requin did not look any easier, he squared his shoulders and met his captain’s eyes resolutely.  “Aye, sir.  I’ll do my best.”

“Good lad,” Jack approved, “Let’s scurry along now.  I believe Anamaria would appreciate a prompt response.”

He propelled Requin ahead of him in the direction of Anamaria’s cabin.

* * * * *

As he had expected, Samuels found Jip returned to his surgery hours later without any assistance from those searching for him.

“Ready for something to eat, are you?” he asked.

Jip beamed artlessly at the doctor who wasn’t deceived in the least. 

“I should send you to bed without your supper, you young limb of Satan.” The doctor tried to sound fierce. 

Nevertheless, he handed the boy his rations.

While Jip gnawed on his salt horse and hardtack and held races with the weevils he found in it, Samuels sent for Murtogg and Mullroy.  Perhaps now, the two of them would be better prepared to keep an eye on their peripatetic pirate. 

This time, the two marines did not attempt to interact with Jip.  Positioning themselves on either side of the door, they watched him with silent intensity, like two cats stalking a particularly tricky mouse.

Jip eyed them speculatively, obviously studying the situation for any weaknesses.  Finally, he seemed resigned to his captivity, allowing the doctor to distract him with a folio-sized volume of William Cowper’s _The anatomy of humane bodies: With figures drawn after the life by some of the best masters in Europe, and curiously engraven in one hundred and fourteen copper plates,_ _illustrated with large explications, containing many new anatomical discoveries, and chirurgical_ _observations: To which is added an introduction explaining the animal oeconomy, with a copious index._

Samuels had to glare at Murtogg and Mullroy when Jip’s exclamations over the ninth table, “The whole brain taken out of the skull,” nearly caused them to abandon their posts in curiousity.

This tactic worked better than Samuels had anticipated because not only was Jip fascinated by the pictures, he also appeared to have some Latin and was laboriously deciphering the text.  Several bells passed by in peace.

However, when their young pirate asked to be taken to the head, Samuels shared a warning glance with the marines. 

They marched off, one on each side of Jip, maintaining a grip on his arms, but somehow Samuels wasn’t surprised when they returned bereft of their captive, carrying only his abandoned crutch.

“He had nowhere to go,” lamented Murtogg.  “But he wanted to use the head alone, so we waited.  When he didn’t come out, we went in anyway, and he was gone.”

Samuels groaned. “You muttonheads! Didn’t you even think that the head is a hole in the ship? Never mind.  Just go inform the commodore.”

Murtogg and Mullroy looked even more abashed at this order.  The two of them slunk off sheepishly to admit their failure.

* * * * *

With resignation, Commodore Norrington ushered Misters Murtogg and Mullroy into his office.

Their report contained very little that was surprising: Jip was missing again.

Norrington frowned at them.  “Gentlemen, am I to understand that two adult men, marines on a King’s vessel, men with two legs apiece, are incapable of controlling the activities of one small boy missing half a leg?”

“Respectfully, sir,” Murtogg explained earnestly, “that ain’t a boy at all.  That is an afreet!”

“An afreet?”

“Yes sir, one o’ them evil heathen demons.” Mullroy looked pleased with their deduction.  “We think that Jack Sparrow fellow left him for us as a curse.”

“A curse,” Norrington said flatly.

“Yes, sir,” the two of them chorused.

At that, there was something to be said for their idea. Oh, he didn’t believe there was anything supernatural about Jip.  But it would be just like Sparrow to curse Norrington with a miniature replica of himself.

“Very well,” Norrington said to his marines. “Continue searching for him.  And next time, do not take your eyes off him for an instant.  You are dismissed.”

When the two had departed, the commodore turned to his two lieutenants.  Gillette’s pained expression was a mirror of his own, but Groves’ eyes were lit with amusement.

“There are over six hundred of us on this vessel,” Norrington sighed. “How is it that one half-sized pirate can make every last one of us feel surrounded and out-flanked?”

Any unlikely answer he might have received from his lieutenants was forestalled by the appearance of the _Dauntless_ ’s carpenter. 

“Commodore Norrington, I’ve located the source of our leaks,” he said without preamble.

“That is excellent news, Mr. Twickenham,” Norrington told him, pleased.  “Have you been able to block them?”

“Well now, there’s a bit of a rub,” the carpenter informed him, looking as flustered as a man who resembled his own wooden element could.  “We appear to have an auger worm problem, sir.”

Norrington felt as though he had been hit across the chest with a grapnel.  Because auger worms were so small when they entered a plank, they could destroy nearly half the weight of a piece of wood before the outer surface showed signs of their presence.  If his _Dauntless_ was infested with those pernicious organisms, she was in imminent danger of becoming unseaworthy.  They would have to get her to a shipyard as swiftly as possible and haul her out of the water until she thoroughly dried out if they hoped to save her.

“Where is the damage, and how bad is it?” he asked, fearing the answer.

“So far, I’ve only been able to discover one infected area—in her bilges, near the larboard bow, just below the bilge water line. But sir,” the man continued, “I’ve never seen anything like it.  These are the biggest worm holes I’ve ever seen.” He shook his head in bafflement. “It’s like someone took an actual auger to her hull. But I haven’t found any worms in the holes.”

Lieutenant Gillette suddenly got an arrested look on his face.  He caught Groves’ eye where a similar comprehension was dawning.

“If you’ll excuse me a moment, sir?” Gillette requested.

“By all means,” Norrington responded, too distracted by the disturbing news to wonder what his first lieutenant could be up to.

“Mr. Twickenham,” Lieutenant Groves asked, “have you checked to see if your own auger is in its proper place?”

 “No sir. I haven’t.  But I’ve not moved it.” The carpenter stared at him in bewilderment. “Surely you are not suggesting someone has stolen it and used it . . . Who would do such a thing?  To hole the hull of one’s own ship . . .” his voice was incredulous, “that would be utter lunacy! Only a madman  . . .”

“Or a pirate.” Commodore Norrington said grimly, enlightenment dawning.  His tone did not bode well for the suspected culprit.

A commotion in the doorway heralded the return of Lieutenant Gillette.

“Commodore, I believe I’ve located our auger worm of unusual size!’  Gillette held up a struggling Jip by the collar.  “Damnit, watch where you’re kicking, you little hellion!”

“I am watching!” Jip concentrated on reducing Gillette’s chances of paternity as violently as possible.

The first lieutenant locked the boy in his arms, protecting more vital areas at the expense of his shins.  Then he continued his interrupted report to the commodore.  “Found him in the bilges with the carpenter’s auger, sir.  Trying to sink this ship, he’s been—one hole at a time.”

“Let me go, you rat bastard son of an undead monkey!” Jip twisted out of the lieutenant’s grip and thumped to the deck, off balance without his crutch.  However, he scrambled back onto his foot immediately, glaring at his captors.

With effort, Commodore Norrington quelled the urge to shake the little villain until his teeth rattled out of his head.  Taking refuge from the fires of his own anger in the rigid ice of Naval procedure, he said coldly, “Jip, you have violated your parole and endangered this vessel.  You will spend the remainder of this voyage in the brig.  Tomorrow morning you will receive as punishment 24 lashes.”

Mr. Twickenham looked as though he thought the punishment far too lenient.

But what Norrington had not expected was the complete crumpling of the little pirate’s defiance.  The angry colour fled from his pinched face, and he wilted into a small huddle on the deck.  When the marines arrived, Murtogg actually had to carry him off to the brig, and unbelievably Jip went in silence. 

When the commodore was finally alone in his cabin that evening, he had time to consider Jip’s response to his sentence.  Remembering Samuels’ description of the little pirate’s scars, he concluded that the boy was likely terrified of flogging.  Jip associated Jack Sparrow and his band of pirates with deliverance and kindness. 

Norrington realized he was uncomfortable with the fact that Jip would see the Navy as so much more inhumane than a ship of criminals.   And yet he saw no legitimate way to avoid disciplining the child.  At least there was no need to make a public display of the event, and the boy’s cat would do Jip no lasting damage.

* * * * *

While Jack would have liked to have accompanied Requin to Anamaria’s cabin and seen with his own eyes how long her unprecedented tolerance would last, a ship-jarring crash accompanied by a chorus of shouting and a litany of curses hauled him up short, pivoted him about as though he’d been caught in a gale wind, and sent him pelting in the opposite direction. 

One of the easing-guys on the main topgallant mast had snapped and the heavy spar was listing dangerously, moments away from dashing through the _Pearls_ decks like a javelin through a straw butt.

Requin and Tearlach and Anamaria would just have to manage without him.

Some time later, when the crisis had been averted by his desperate and courageous crew, he came across Requin untangling buntlines and clewlines, coiling them neatly and hanging them on their belaying pins.

Apparently the lad had survived his encounter with the first mate.

Curious, he inquired, “Everything went well then?”

“Oh aye,” Requin responded tranquilly.  “No worries.”

Having expected the young man to be in a far more traumatized state than this, Jack’s inquisitiveness increased.

“Anamaria is comfortable?”

The boy nodded.  “As much as possible.”  He smiled at Jack.  “Well she might still be a little of the uncomfortable.  But she rests.”

Now that was anticlimactic.  Jack was somewhat chagrined to discover his presence so unnecessary to Anamaria’s peace of mind.  However, even if Requin’s account of his adventure with the first mate and the chamber pot was disappointingly dull, Anamaria had hinted that there was something of interest to tell about Requin’s confrontation with the British marines.

Settling himself beside the boy, Jack began to disentangle a line.  It was such a relief to be off his feet, he feared he would not be getting up again, but he could worry about that later.  Since Requin was not yet capable of extensive conversation in English, Jack slipped over to French.  He did not want to miss a word of this story.

“Anamaria tells me I have you to thank for some quick thinking during our taking of the _Defender._ ”  Jack opened the topic.  “I’d like to hear what happened from your point of view.”

Requin made a disgusted face. “I do not like to talk about those English pigs.  Such men do not deserve their deeds to be remembered.  But I will tell you because you ask, and you are the captain.

“When Banks and the other marine first took us captive, they tied my hands behind me but left Anamaria free.  At first I thought they would only say terrible things, or perhaps be a little rough with us.  I did not think they would be able to hurt Anamaria.  However, when Banks returned, and I saw that he would force himself on her, I did not know what I could do. 

“You told me once that there are only two things that matter: What a man can do, and what a man can’t do.  But I have watched you, Captain Sparrow, and I have learnt that there is something else that matters: What you make men believe you can do, even if you cannot do it.”

“I realized that those English marines believed I was a threat, even though I was not.  And they believed Anamaria was harmless, even though she was not.  So, although my hands were bound behind my back, I thought that if I could get a hold of the rifle on the table behind me, I might make Banks believe that I could aim and fire it, even though I knew I could not.  And that would give Anamaria a chance to kill him if she wished. When the cannons spoke, I had my chance.” 

Requin shuddered.  “I did not know what she would do to him.  But I held the gun, because that Banks . . . he deserved anything she could have done.”

Anamaria was right, Jack reflected. Requin’s swift thinking and action had prevented a far more dangerous battle between her and the two marines.  He had no doubt Anamaria would have prevailed.  But the cost to her—he did not care about Banks or the other—would have been far higher. 

Holding out his hand to his young crewman, such an unlikely pirate, Captain Sparrow said, “Requin, that was bloody brilliant.  It is an honour to have you in my crew.”

Ducking his head, abashed at the praise, Requin shook his captain’s hand.  “It is an honour to be in your crew,” he said.

It turned out to be a good thing Jack had a crewman’s hand to assist him to his feet.  The accomplishment left him as drained as a topman who’d spent hours furling canvas in a tempest.  Not for the first time, Captain Sparrow wondered when his body was going to go down and fail to let him up again.

* * * * *

As the long light began to cast the _Black Pearl’_ s dark silhouette over her smaller adversary, three slender lines of shadow stretched out towards the orient horizon and danced along the jeweled surface of the sea.  Stepped deep in her kelson, the _Black Pearl’_ s masts once more reached up to embrace the sky.  Her yards remained in disarray, many completely detached and lying on her deck, but she was no longer dragging her wings in the sea.  At last she was beginning to look like a creature that would take flight again.

If Jack hadn’t known for a gold-plated, indestructible, engraved fact that he would not rise again with any number of helping hands, he would have fallen to his knees in sheer gratitude. However, in direct proportion to the increase in the strength of his ship, he felt his own descent into weakness, as though his beloved _Pearl_ was consuming him to nourish her return to health.

“It’s all right, love.” He stroked her scarred rail lovingly. “You just take what you need.”

“Now ain’t that a pretty sight?” a familiar voice spoke behind his shoulder.

Jack whirled around in equal parts astonishment, hope, and inadvisable speed. “Anamaria!” he exclaimed before staggering back against the _Pearl’_ s rail as his battered body objected to his precipitate movement.

His first mate was perched on a pair of crutches, her head lifted to see the _Pearl’_ s tall masts, attenuating high above them into the flameshot sky.

But for once Jack had no attention to spare for his goddess ship.  Tearlach and Requin had succeeded where he had failed, and Anamaria was clad in the crimson dress as it was meant to be worn, the bodice clinging to her slender waist, revealing her shapely shoulders and arms, with no tattered pirate shirt spoiling its antique but elegant lines.  Even more improbably, her hair had been brushed and styled, upswept and falling in soft dusky curls to her shoulders.  The setting sun gilded her warm skin and lit glittering candles in her wide, dark eyes.

Jack was used to thinking his first mate was a fine-looking woman, but he was not prepared for this breathtaking incarnation.

“Close your mouth, Jack. You’ll catch flies,” Anamaria snapped at him.

Anamaria, who, while lying in bed with her clothing half ripped off, could outface marines, naval officers and her captain alike, was actually looking embarrassed at being caught _in flagrante,_ wearing a dress with her hair up like a lady.

“You’re blushing!” Jack told her in delight. “Behold, how like a maid she blushes here!”

He imagined that if she hadn’t been gripping the crutches so tightly the bones were showing white through her dark bruised skin, she’d have knocked him down.

Taking advantage of his temporary immunity from retribution, Jack stepped closer and reached to brush a finger along her rose-stained face. “The brightness of her cheek would shame those stars as daylight doth a lamp,” he quoted.

Anamaria bit him.

“Owwww! Damnit woman!” Jack pulled his abused finger back in indignation and stuck it in his mouth. “I have _got_ to stop givin’ you compliments!”

“This is all Requin’s fault,” Anamaria grumbled, a jerk of her chin indicating her entire appearance.  “Boy’s goin’ to grow up t’ be a managin’ manipulative bastard just like you.”

“I had no idea Requin was a man of so many talents,” Jack said admiringly.  “Where’d he learn to play the lady’s maid?”

“He said he used to watch his mother,” Anamaria said, scowling.  “He said she liked to have her hair brushed, and he used to do it when she was ill.”

“Well, blush not, Cleopatra,” Jack said teasingly.  “I approve your wisdom in the deed.  That dress would not have looked right without the elegant coiffure.”

“Bloody useless waste of fabric.” Anamaria sniffed scornfully.

“But you can use a chamber pot whenever you want,” Jack suggested.

“There is that,” Anamaria conceded grudgingly.

“Let me show you what we’ve done,” Jack offered, and the two of them made the rounds of the deck together, ever so slowly.

It was a measure of Anamaria’s ability to put the fear of God into his crew that she could appear in such unprecedented apparel with nary an exclamation to be heard. Amused, Jack noted a number of shocked expressions and widened eyes.  But any queries or suggestions she offered the men were met with entirely respectful “Yes, ma’am’s.”

However, an astounded Captain Walton, skulking disconsolately where he could keep an eye on his vessel, doffed his tricorn and swept her an elegant bow before he recognized who she was.

Jack noticed that with the fading of her temper, the colour was bleeding from Anamaria’s face.  And her hands were trembling even as they clutched her crutches.  “Come now, lass,” he said gently. “You’ve had enough adventure for today. Time to put you back to bed.”

“As if you shouldn’t be in bed yourself,” Anamaria retorted.

His brain being too tired to preserve his life, Jack shot her an alluring grin and offered, “I’ll join you in a moment.”

“Jack Sparrow,” Anamaria flared up again, “You are going to regret that you even have a tongue—as soon as I have hands.”

But Anamaria had nothing left with which to fulfill her threats.  Before he got her back to her cabin, she delivered her final performance as a lady by fainting dead away in his arms.  At least Jack tried to catch her in his arms.  All he succeeded in doing was cushioning her landing as he fell underneath her. 

In the end, both captain and first mate had to be carried to bed and tucked in by Tearlach.

* * * * *

TBC


	27. With Rainy Eyes Write Sorrow on the Bosom of the Earth

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> On board the Dauntless, Groves tells Sparrow stories and Jip takes his punishment. On board the Pearl, a funeral takes place.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings: Disturbing Naval discipline, death, and discussions of slavery

As soon as he was off duty that evening, Lieutenant Theodore Groves made his way down to the brig to check on Jip. In the dim light of the single lantern, he saw the marine, Mullroy, perched on a barrel outside the cell, cleaning his rifle. Under the guise of watching over a potential escapee, Mullroy was keeping Jip company; the commodore had made sure his prisoner would not be left alone to await his punishment.  
  
The small pirate huddled, a tangle of thin arms and legs, in the corner of the cell, eyes wide and gone black, staring straight ahead.  
  
“He’s been like that since we put him in there,” Mullroy shrugged. “Hasn’t said a word.” The marine squinted critically at his charge. “’Tain’t natural is what I say. That little devil never shuts up.”  
  
The lieutenant approached the bars of the brig. “May I come in?” he asked. Receiving no response, he said, “I’ll take that as a ‘yes’,” and let himself into the cell.   
  
Mullroy locked the grated door behind him.  
  
Not sure at what point the boy would construe his approach a menace, Groves did not move any closer. Settling himself on his heels and draping his arms unthreateningly over his knees, he contemplated his cellmate.  
  
“Shall I tell you a story?” he offered, not expecting an answer—which was just as well because he didn’t get one. “Good,” he continued brightly. “This is one of my favourites. I call it ‘The Day the Royal Navy Will Always Remember as the Day They Almost Hanged Captain Jack Sparrow.’”  
  
At the mention of the pirate captain’s name, something indefinable changed in the demeanor of the prisoner. Groves could tell he had an audience now, even though the boy was still not looking at him.  
  
“You see, we’d just returned to Port Royal after rescuing the daughter of the governor of Jamaica and the local blacksmith from the pirate crew that had mutinied on Captain Sparrow. Since Sparrow’s ship was gone, he’d had no choice but to accept the _Dauntless_ ’ offer of hospitality, in this very brig in fact, and resign himself to an assignation with the hangman. The governor’s daughter was . . . not pleased . . . with Commodore Norrington.” Groves shook his head reminiscently. “Your captain had saved her life several times, you see.”  
  
His small auditor was relaxing now, Groves noted with satisfaction. “The governor’s daughter is a force to be reckoned with, but the commodore stuck to his guns. Jack Sparrow was a convicted pirate, and the law said he must be hanged, so hanged he would be. The good commodore can be a bit of an immoveable object when he feels the situation demands it,” he confided to Jip, feeling that the present situation exemplified his point exactly.  
  
“You never saw such a hanging,” the lieutenant continued. “The entire town showed up to see the legendary Captain Jack Sparrow dance the hempen jig. Even the governor’s daughter was there—and the blacksmith, which in retrospect was an oversight on the commodore’s part.  
  
“I’ve seen men go to the gallows weeping and begging, crying and praying, cursing and fighting. But Jack Sparrow stood there, asking no quarter, blaming no one, as though being hanged was merely another hazardous adventure. He even laughed when they read his charges. Did you know he once impersonated a cleric of the Church of England?”  
  
Jip’s eyes were tracking him now, and a half smile accompanied a small shake of his head.  
  
“That is a great pity. I’ve always wanted to hear that story.” Groves exaggerated looking mournful, and the smile spread a little. Apparently the lieutenant was on the right heading. Cautiously he moved to sit down beside the boy. “He is a brave man, your captain.”  
  
“When he doesn’t have any other options, he says,” Jip offered. “He says courage is for fools who’ve been stupid enough to need it.”  
  
Groves snorted. “He may have a point. Certainly, he needed it that day.”  
  
“But they didn’t hang him,” Jip pointed out. “After all, he’s still on the _Pearl_.”  
  
“Oh, they hanged him all right.” Groves shook his head, remembering. “The noose was around his neck. The lever was pulled. The trap dropped. By all rights, he should have been dead at that point.” He paused.  
  
“Then what happened?” Jip asked eagerly.  
  
“Well now,” the lieutenant said, smiling at the boy, “you remember that blacksmith I’d mentioned was prowling about on the loose?”  
  
Jip nodded.  
  
“Will Turner’s his name. And Mr. Turner is more than a bit of a dab hand with the small sword—both the making and the wielding of it. When the trap dropped, that young man saw his opportunity to pay back his debt. Drawing his sword, he hurled it into the wooden frame of the gallows below the trap where it stuck like an arrow in a target, and your captain managed to land with both feet on that wavering strip of steel.”  
  
“Criminy!” Jip exclaimed, beginning to bounce. “I’d like to learn that trick!”  
  
“Knowing Mr. Turner,” Groves reflected, “I’m sure he’d teach you.” He wondered if Commodore Norrington might be persuaded to remit their little prisoner into Turner’s custody the next time they made Port Royal. Certainly the blacksmith had a soft spot for Jack Sparrow and would treat his protégé with kindness. He’d have to mention it to the commodore.  
  
“Go on!” Jip prompted. “What happened next?”  
  
Obediently, the lieutenant continued, “While Sparrow was dancing on that sword trying not to complete his own hanging, the blacksmith leapt up on the platform, drove the hangman off into the arms of the marines rushing to stop him, and cut your captain free. Then Turner vaulted off the platform, came up running, and was joined by Sparrow, who’d made it down off that sword without slicing anything more than the bonds off his wrists.” Groves grinned down at his impatient auditor. “The two of them dashed for the battlements, knocking down marines with the rope from the noose stretched between them. Of course, that couldn’t last. Eventually we had them surrounded. Mr. Turner had naturally availed himself of a nearby sword, but even he was no match for a dozen bayonets. So, once again, your captain was back in the hands of the law.”  
  
“But he escaped again!” Jip crowed happily. “How did he escape?”  
  
“By misdirection, lad,” Groves said wryly. “The commodore was distracted by Mr. Turner who was refusing to let him take Sparrow without a fight, and then the governor’s daughter joined in the general confusion by siding with the blacksmith. Meanwhile Sparrow was rambling about, babbling his last words to everyone from the commodore to the governor. Since he didn’t seem to be trying to escape, no one paid any attention to how close he was getting to the edge of the parapet until he backed up onto it. Waving his arms like an orator, your captain proclaimed, ‘This is the day you will always remember as the day that—’ and then he simply fell over backwards.” Groves shook his head. “Any other man would have cracked himself like an egg on the rocks at the base of that cliff, but Jack Sparrow has the devil’s own luck. He hit the water, did not drown, and was picked up by the _Black Pearl_ who just happened to be waiting in the shadows of the headland.”  
  
Jip’s fiendish glee at this ending to the story made Groves smile; he was pleased to see some of the lad’s colour and sparkle restored.  
  
Deliberately, the lieutenant brought the conversation around to the real purpose of his visit. “And now, I think perhaps you have been foolish enough to have need of your courage, have you not, Jip?”  
  
At this reminder, the child wilted a little. “But I’m not sorry!” he insisted stoutly.  
  
“Of course you’re not,” Groves agreed. “You were trying to protect your home and the people you love.” He made sure Jip was looking him in the eyes before he continued. “That is what Commodore Norrington and the _Dauntless_ are trying to do, too. We have homes and people to protect as well. Do you understand?”  
  
Jip nodded soberly. “I understand.”  
  
“It is too bad that means we end up hurting each other, isn’t it?” Groves said quietly.  
  
“Yes.” Jip’s voice was subdued.  
  
“I want you to know that I am sorry,” Lieutenant Groves said. “I know that is of very little use to you. I cannot give you back anything that you have lost, nor can I turn aside the consequences of your actions. But I truly wish I could.”  
  
Jip searched Groves’ face, judging the lieutenant’s sincerity. Finally, he ducked his chin in a brief nod, accepting the apology.  
  
“What I _can_ do is give you some advice for tomorrow. I am _not_ recommending that you practice Jack Sparrow’s stoicism,” Groves said emphatically. “Bo’sun likes to know when he’s doing his job, so you yell when it hurts. That’s what I always did when I was a lad.” He winked at the astonished Jip. “Oh yes, I got my share of the boys’ cat in my misspent youth. I soon discovered that if I suffered in silence, it only inspired the bo’sun to greater exertion.”   
  
The small pirate was staring at him wide-eyed. “Do you have lots of scars?” Jip asked.  
  
“Of course not,” Groves assured him. “I mended my wicked ways long before I was old enough for a man’s flogging.”  
  
“I have,” said Jip under his breath, looking down. “Lots of scars, I mean.”   
  
“I had heard,” the lieutenant said softly, putting a hand on Jip’s thin shoulder. “Do you want to tell me that story?”  
  
The boy was quiet for a moment. When he spoke, Groves had to lean close to catch the words. “It was for the wind,” Jip explained. “When we hadn’t any wind for days and days, they’d tie me to the mast . . .” his voice trailed off.  
  
Groves drew a breath in shocked comprehension. He’d heard rumours of that superstition. Not on English ships. But some shipmasters believed that if a ship was trapped in the doldrums, binding the cabin boy to the mast and flogging him until he bled would call the wind to his back. No wonder the lad was terrified of punishment.  
  
“I was really glad,” Jip continued fervently, “when Captain Sparrow took me off that ship. Nobody gets flogged for anything on the _Black Pearl_. When I get in trouble, I have to clean up after Cat o’Nine.”  
  
Confused, Groves interrupted, “But I thought you said . . .”  
  
“Our cat,” Jip explained. “Her name is Cat o’Nine Tails. I suppose she’s drowned now,” he finished morosely. “And I’m here, and there’s flogging again.”  
  
“Only the boys’ cat,” Groves hastened to reassure him. “The commodore would never order a child like you flogged with the cat o’nine.”  
  
Jip brightened a little at this news.   
  
“Now I’m going to have to return to my duties,” the lieutenant told Jip, getting to his feet and dusting off his uniform. “But I wanted to see how you were doing down here and bring you something to eat.” He pulled a handkerchief-wrapped packet from his coat pocket. “It’s from the commodore’s own table,” he informed the youngster. “Don’t tell him I lifted it.”  
  
He and Jip shared a conspiratorial gleam as the boy took the packet.   
  
As Mullroy let Groves back out of the cell, Jip spoke up unexpectedly. “Will you be there?”  
  
The lieutenant looked back at him and nodded. “Yes, Jip, I’ll be there—to see another brave man take his punishment.”  
  
He held out his hand through the bars, and a small paw disappeared into it.  
  
“We have an accord,” Jip said. They shook hands gravely.   
  
Withdrawing his hand, Lieutenant Groves made a show of inspecting it for fleas, overplaying his relief at finding himself vermin-free.   
  
As he climbed up the stairs, he could still hear a small giggling pirate back in the gloomy cell.  
  
* * * * *   
  
Long before the young sun drew the glow of a new day over the unquiet slumber of the sea, Captain Walton found himself rudely awakened by his pirate escort, this time the grizzled quartermaster, Gibbs. Apparently his few hours of respite while Captain Sparrow slept were over. Walton could have sworn when the pirate captain had collapsed while trying to assist his unconscious first mate that the man would not be back on his feet for days, and yet here he was, striding the decks of his _Black Pearl_ , a shadowy figure around which all other moving shadows revolved in the grey predawn.  
  
As Walton creaked stiffly and painfully to his feet, resigned to yet another day of stumbling in the wake of the inhumanly energetic Sparrow, he realized that the activity occupying the pirates so early in the morning was that of preparing their shipmates for burial. With their ship no longer in imminent danger of sinking out from under them, they had turned to this other necessary and too-long-delayed task.  
  
The work of restoring the _Black Pearl_ was being accomplished amidst a cacophony of noise—the clamour of men cursing and shouting and singing, the clashing and creaking and hammering and chopping of wood and rope and metal. But now an inviolable hush muted the tumult, as though the decks of the ship, anointed by the blood of her dead, were touched with eternity.  
  
For some time the Naval captain observed as more bodies were carried onto the deck. In the end, he counted twenty-six still forms.   
  
Captain Jack Sparrow moved among his fallen crewmen as a man might draw a knife through his flesh, noting each recognizable face, kneeling to search with his own hands for identifying marks on those no longer recognizable. After each identification, he recorded the name of the dead man in the log the midget pirate was carrying for him. At this point, Captain Walton was no longer surprised at the pirate captain’s ability to write a flourishing but legible hand.  
  
Walton’s escort Gibbs, along with propelling him after Sparrow, appeared to have been assigned to tell him stories about each of the men who had died in their engagement with the Royal Navy. Walton learned that a man with the unlikely name of Beeblock had a botanical hobby complete with carefully pressed specimens from all the _Pearl_ ’s ports of call. That a crumpled heap of tattooed limbs and viscera had been Allen Cowper who was supporting an infant son and two small daughters with his share as a pirate. That a man named Garcilaso was the great great grandson of the illegitimate son of Garcilaso de la Vega and wrote beautiful poetry like his poet-soldier ancestor, or so Gibbs said Jack had told him, since Gibbs himself didn’t speak a word of the Spanish lingo and couldn’t say. That another of the dead, Earless Mo, also wrote poetry, but very bad poetry.   
  
“Not that bad,” Sparrow said, overhearing.   
  
“Oh aye, that bad,” insisted Gibbs.   
  
The midget pirate agreed. “The boys paid him extra shares not to read his poems aloud when he was drunk.”  
  
There was a pirate who had done beautiful needlework—altar cloths and table linens. And there was one who had been able to play two horns at the same time. The simple stories revealed the truth that at sea there is only the little band of men, and when one goes, no one comes to take his place.  
  
At the body of a powerful black man, Captain Sparrow bent down and with a gentle hand brushed a wildly knotted strand of hair from the twisted face. The gesture was incredibly tender. “At last you are at peace, my friend,” he said softly. Straightening with difficulty, Sparrow turned to the captive Naval officer. “You may congratulate yourself, Walton, on putting a period to the existence of such a desperate criminal. Nadiondi has been fleeing English justice for ten years now.”  
  
“And what were his crimes?” Walton asked.  
  
“Murder,” said Sparrow shortly. “And running away.”   
  
Walton had noticed the old brand of a slave on the dead man’s face.  
  
“Yes,” the pirate captain continued. “It is after all, perfectly acceptable for an overseer to beat a young woman until the child she carries is dead. When it is born, the marks of the beating on its body are not sufficient evidence against him of murder. When the woman hangs herself in despair and grief, it is not murder. But when her husband kills the man who is responsible for the deaths of his child and his wife, he is certainly a murderer and a rebellious slave and must die.”  
  
“That is a terrible story,” Walton said, shocked.  
  
“It is a terrible thing to do to a human being,” Sparrow corrected him. “Thus, the man escaped to become a pirate, because here no man is a slave, nor do we bow to the kings or countries that enslave others, and we only steal men’s possessions and not their bodies and souls. But piracy also merits him death.”  
  
Having delivered this statement, Jack Sparrow pivoted away and ignored his captive for which mercy Walton was grateful because he did not know what answer he could have made.  
  
Pausing at the body of a dark-skinned man with a heavily bearded face, Sparrow halted the pirate sewing him into his canvas shroud. “Wait,” he ordered. Turning to his quartermaster he asked, “Mister Gibbs, where is Asfar? His brother is dead and must be given _ghusl, hunnut_ and _kafan_ according to the customs of his people before the _namaz-e-mayyit_ can be offered.”  
  
Having sent the crewman whose task he’d interrupted in search of the dead man’s brother, Sparrow seized on another crewman with orders to bring the ship’s astrolabe and octant, because Asfar would be wanting to locate _qibla_ before the burial.  
  
Noticing Walton’s blank incomprehension, Gibbs explained that Asfar was a follower of the prophet Muhammad and would need to ritually bathe, anoint and clothe his brother before he was given to the sea, and that he would need to face the Muslim holy place in Mecca when he offered the prayer for his brother’s soul. To Walton’s look of astonishment, Gibbs shrugged. “Those boys are the best navigators we’ve got, so what does it matter how many times a day they have to pray?”   
  
Captain Walton was beginning to realize how much more complicated life aboard a ship could be when no effort was made to turn every crew member into a single being.  
  
The next body was a bald-headed man who had obviously not survived a double amputation. Walton noted that Jack Sparrow seemed particularly hard hit by this man’s death. The pirate captain went down on one knee and gripped the lifeless hand. “Matelot, Matelot,” he whispered. “Old friend, did you have to break down this door too?”  
  
But there was little time for grief, and so Sparrow settled the hand of his friend back on his chest. When Gibbs had helped him to his feet, the pirate captain’s dark eyes glittered bright with unshed tears.   
  
“Matelot—he would not have wanted to live without his legs,” the short pirate offered, wiping his traitorous nose on his shirtsleeve.  
  
“And at least Jip will have someone to look out for him on the other side,” the quartermaster said, his gruff voice even rougher.  
  
Captain Sparrow passed his hands down over his face as though to erase all emotion and nodded. Bracing his shoulders and taking a deep breath that cut short on a wince, he moved on.  
  
The next name recorded in the log belonged to a pirate little more than a boy really. One of the marine sharpshooters had achieved his mark.   
  
Sparrow’s shadowy, troubled eyes met Walton’s. “It’s always the hardest when it’s the children, isn’t it?” he said.  
  
Walton, who had stood many times before his own mutely accusing, canvas-clad bundles whether because of disease or mishap or battle, knew exactly what the pirate meant. This fellow feeling with his enemy was a strange and uneasy experience for the Naval captain. He imagined Jack Sparrow intended for it to be so.   
  
Over and over again, their small party paused by the bodies of the dead and Sparrow made his record while Gibbs and sometimes the midget pirate, whose name Walton learned was Marty, told the stories. As Walton looked back over the long row of still forms nearly completely enshrouded now, he realized he could put incidents or bits of personal information and often names with most of them.  
  
The twenty-sixth pirate entered in the log was a tall, fair man, who looked as though he might merely be asleep. His shipmate, who had begun the process of sewing his corpse into the canvas that had been his home at sea and would now be his grave clothes, was examining something that glinted gold in his fingers.   
  
Sparrow held out his hand, “May I see?”  
  
The youth raised a tear-stained face to him questioningly then with some reluctance tipped the bit of treasure into his captain’s palm.  
  
Sparrow examined the small ornament, dexterous fingers finding the latch and carefully opening it. Walton was close enough to see that the locket contained a miniature of a fair young woman and a curl of pale hair.  
  
“Who was she?” Sparrow asked the lad.  
  
“His wife,” the boy replied, his voice thickly accented. “When she died, Bjorn came to the sea.”  
  
To Walton’s surprise, the pirate captain returned the valuable golden trinket to his crewman.  
  
“See that it’s buried with him.”   
  
The young pirate carefully re-clasped the locket around his mate’s neck. Then he resumed the heartbreaking task of threading the heavy sailmaker’s needle through the stiff canvas.  
  
Sparrow turned as if to continue then realized he was finished.   
  
“God willing, that’s the last of them,” said Gibbs.  
  
“From your lips to God’s ears,” Marty agreed, stoppering the bottle of ink.  
  
Gazing upon the still bundles receiving their last stitches, Captain Sparrow pressed his hands together, fingertips and palms touching, and bowed. Only his lips moved over the words intended for no living ears, “Thank you.”  
  
A commotion at the aft hatch drew their attention away from the sorrowful work on deck.  
  
“Captain, Captain! Look who I found!” A lad Walton’s mind kept trying to see as a midshipman, even though he knew pirates did not have naval ranks, came struggling out onto deck.  
  
He ran in a peculiar, folded over, twisted manner, cradling something to his chest. When he reached his captain, he held out his scratched and bleeding hands which were filled with a writhing, spitting, clawing bundle of raggedy black fur.  
  
“Cat O’ Nine Tails!” he exclaimed. “I found her in the galley! She didn’t drown!”  
  
Cat O’ Nine Tales, Walton realized, was not an instrument of punishment but a most unprepossessing specimen of felinity—a scruffy, one-eared, cross-eyed cat, with a tail that proceeded in several unlikely directions. She did not appear to be an even-tempered creature.   
  
Nevertheless, one of Sparrow’s incandescent smiles broke through the clouds as he carefully detached the irate animal from his crewman’s grasp.  
  
The cat glared balefully at him, growling and hissing and not in a mood to be placated.  
  
When he folded her in his arms and buried his face in her tatterdemalion coat, she set all her claws and teeth into whatever parts of his hide she could reach. Then in a massive flurry of kicks and squirms, the cat succeeded in escaping Sparrow’s grip.  
  
“Avast! Ye scurvy varmint!” shouted the parrot sitting on the mute pirate’s shoulder.  
  
The cat did not “Avast.” She hit the deck at a sprint and was up the mizzenmast in an eye blink. Perching on the crosstrees, she kept up a grumbling complaint about a crew and a captain who could not be counted on to keep a ship right side up with the sea out of its hull and a good supply of rats in its hold.  
  
Captain Sparrow had not wept amongst his dead, but now the glow of morning on the horizon revealed the traces of tears on his cheeks.  
  
Walton understood. In the midst of all this death, something had come back to life.  
  
* * * * *   
  
Ordinarily dawn was a pleasant time aboard the _Dauntless_ ; however, on occasions such as these, Commodore Norrington could have wished for the night to continue.  
  
He had chosen to administer Jip’s punishment in his cabin away from the curious and prying eyes of the men on deck. There was no need to use this discipline as a deterrent for the other lads. The only witnesses would be himself, the doctor, as was customary, the boatswain, and by his own request, Lieutenant Groves.  
  
Murtogg and Mullroy arrived with Jip collared between them. The little culprit seemed to have recovered some of his spirit since he had first been sentenced. Nevertheless, he hung back at the door and had to be pushed into the room.   
  
After the marines had departed, closing the door behind them, Jip stood with his back to the wood and refused to take a step further. When the boatswain made as if he would seize the boy to bind him for his punishment, Jip stared up wide-eyed at the burly man and shrank back even though he had nowhere to go.   
  
Then to Norrington’s surprise, his second lieutenant motioned the man aside. Looking at the commodore, Groves said, “I’ll do it, if you don’t mind, sir.”  
  
Norrington nodded and waved his permission.   
  
Groves approached Jip and held out his hand. “Come, you pestilential brat. Are you ready to get this over with?”  
  
Norrington saw some of the steel return to the boy’s spine. Whether it was the friendly face or the bracing tone, Jip responded to the young lieutenant, straightening up and taking the proffered hand. The two of them approached the gun intended for Jip’s summary flogging.  
  
“Here’s a hammock all folded up to pad your stomach,” Groves said, patting the item. Taking the boy’s crutch, he assisted Jip with a determinedly cheerful, “Now up you go.”   
  
Once again, Norrington was struck with how tiny their captive pirate was. Bent over the breech of the smallest gun, he barely brushed the deck with the toes on his remaining leg.  
  
“I’m going to have to tie your wrists together under the barrel,” Groves explained, flashing Jip a warm smile. “You’re so good at escaping, you see.”  
  
Jip took a deep breath, returned the smile, and then cooperated with his own binding.   
  
“Now,” Groves informed Jip, “I’ll have to raise your shirt.”  
  
Gently the lieutenant did as he’d described, but as he did so, his hands froze.  
  
Only the doctor was prepared for the spectacle of Jip’s back. Dark, angry ropes of scars that seemed far too heavy to be borne on those thin shoulders crisscrossed the small pirate’s tanned skin. Even Norrington, who had known theoretically that they were there, caught his breath in shocked comprehension. Unsurprising that the boy had panicked at the sentence. What sort of monster would do such a thing to a child? Almost, he wished there were a way he could turn a blind eye to Jip’s depredations.   
  
“Commodore,” Groves turned, his expression a mixture of horror and self-loathing, “surely we cannot . . .”  
  
Norrington shook his head fractionally. “Carry on, Lieutenant.” He kept his voice firm.  
  
Jip clenched his eyes shut as though he were fighting off memories.   
  
Reluctantly, Lieutenant Groves obeyed his orders, finishing with the boy’s shirt and pulling down his breeches, but he continued a low murmured conversation with Jip. “I promise, it’s just the boy’s cat, Jip. Five smooth strands. No knots. It’ll be over in six minutes.”  
  
Jip looked up at the lieutenant from where his face lay along the barrel of the gun. “This is the day you will always remember as the day you almost beat Jip of the _Black Pearl_ ,” he said with an odd light in his eyes.  
  
Norrington would have cause to remember those words.  
  
Groves squeezed the boy’s shoulder. “Brave man,” he approved. “Now here’s a piece of hide for you to bite on so that you don’t curse Bo’sun into a bad temper.”  
  
Jip actually managed a small snort before his mouth was stopped.  
  
Then the lieutenant stepped back and nodded to the commodore.   
  
“You may proceed.” Norrington gave the boatswain the word.  
  
As the first crack of the lash sounded across Jip’s flesh, the small pirate let out a yelp that could have taken the bark off a tree. Gilbert Samuels flinched as though he had been struck himself and looked away, but for some unaccountable reason, Theodore Groves had a grim smile twisting his lips.  
  
While the flogging dragged on, with the pause after each stroke so that its full effect could be felt by the victim, Jip’s cries increased in volume until they were painful to the ears. Norrington, who had heard the child scarcely make a sound while his leg was being amputated, was stunned.  
  
After the twelfth stroke, Groves took the teary-eyed Jip the customary draught of water. When he had finished gulping it down, Jip gritted his teeth. “All right,” he said in a nearly normal voice. “Get on with it.”  
  
The second dozen lashes proceeded as the first had done, with Jip howling in apparent agony. Norrington thought the doctor was going to be ill. In fact, he was not sure who was going to be more relieved when the punishment was over.  
  
When at last the sound of the lash ceased, and Jip fell silent, the doctor and the lieutenant moved instantly to his side.  
  
After a flogging, it was Samuels’ duty to examine the victim and treat any lacerations with mercuric oxide salve; however, this time he did not discover any to treat. The boatswain, who was entirely capable of breaking skin even with the boy’s cat, had not approached that severity with Jip.  
  
“Well lad, it’s over.” Groves bent down and released the bonds from Jip’s wrists. “Steady as she goes.” He helped ease the boy off the gun and handed him his crutch.  
  
As carefully as possible, the lieutenant and the doctor helped Jip restore his clothing. Although the boy’s breath hissed as his breeches were drawn over his sore posterior, he made no complaint.  
  
The commodore noticed Jip look up at Lieutenant Groves questioningly. The young officer nodded at the lad, as though they were communicating without words. Then Groves slowly and quietly clapped his hands in applause. The small pirate grinned at him.  
  
Yes, reflected Norrington, that had been a performance worthy of Drury Lane. Even the boatswain, whose heart was made of boiled leather, and whose arm was made of iron, according to the ship’s boys, had not been immune to it. He had no doubt that Bo’sun had never administered such a light flogging in all his days of wielding the cat.   
  
Lieutenant Groves accompanied the gingerly moving Jip to the cabin door where Murtogg and Mullroy were waiting outside to return the little pirate to his cell. As the door closed behind him, Norrington heard Jip’s voice raised consigning the Navy, corporately and individually, to every level of Dante’s hell and their ships from the first rate men o’war to the jolly boats to Davy Jones’ Locker   
  
Theodore Groves dropped into a chair, covered his face with his hands and shook his head. “Jip!” he groaned. “I don’t know whether to laugh or to weep!”  
  
Samuels, who was already slumped in his own chair, was still looking a mite peaked, so the commodore summoned his steward to bring the brandy and glasses. The doctor tossed his down with a complete lack of reverence for good spirits and held out his glass for more.  
  
“Well,” he said bitterly. “That was a singularly distasteful bit of business.”  
  
“Indeed.” Norrington stared at the untasted liquid in his glass. “I wish it had not been necessary.”   
  
Samuels frowned disbelieving but did not seem prepared to reopen old arguments.  
  
“Perhaps he has learnt his lesson,” the commodore spoke without much hope. This was, after all, Sparrow’s protégé.  
  
“I’m very much afraid he has, James. I think he’s learned he can survive a flogging. He’ll factor it into the cost of anything else he does, but for the right price, I’ll wager he’d be willing to go through it again.” The doctor scowled into his glass. “He’s got more intestinal fortitude than I have. I’m not sure I could go through that again.”  
  
Lieutenant Groves raised his glass to the doctor in silent agreement.  
  
“Then it is a good thing he will remain locked in the brig for the duration of our voyage,” Norrington said. “I am sure he will be happy to occupy Jack Sparrow’s former cell.”  
  
*****  
  
The black flag with its skull and crossed sabers flickered at half mast against the pale sky. However, in preparation for the burial of their dead, the pirates of the _Black Pearl_ had no need to untrim her lines or to set her yards acockbill. The damage their ship had undergone had left her with her yards unshipped and her rigging hopelessly fouled, far deeper emblems of mourning than any mere ritual required  
  
Although the day was dawning fine and clear, a grey mist like a pall of grief seemed to rise over the _Black Pearl_ as if the ship herself wept for her dead. Captain Walton quickly repressed the illogical thought. There was a perfectly rational explanation. He was so exhausted that his dreams were reaching up into the waking world. It was only the emotional climate giving him the sensation that the sun warming the decks of the _Defender_ could not touch the strained, gaunt faces of the pirates gathering in no particular formation by the lee rail of the _Pearl_ for the burial of their fallen shipmates.  
  
At the windward rail of his ship, Captain Sparrow stood, bareheaded, his dead in a long row at his feet. On his left stood the quartermaster, Gibbs, hat in hand, head bowed. On his right, the young woman, Sparrow’s first mate, her crimson gown muted by a dark greatcoat, seemed barely able to hold herself upright on crutches. The giant pirate who stood next to her was most likely there to support her if she failed.  
  
Among these pirates there was, of course, no chaplain to offer the service for the dead, so the duty fell to the captain. With hands uncharacteristically fumbling, Captain Sparrow opened the tattered, water-damaged Bible although he could have selected any number of perfectly sound volumes from those aboard the _Defender_.  
  
In a voice clear and carrying, he began to read:  
  
“Hear my prayer, O Lord. Hold not thy peace at my tears.  
For I am a stranger with thee: and a sojourner.  
O spare me a little, that I may recover my strength  
before I go hence and be no more seen.  
Comfort us again now after the time that thou hast plagued us   
and for the years wherein we have suffered adversity.  
Man that is born of a woman hath but a short time to live, and is full of misery.   
He cometh up and is cut down, like a flower;   
he fleeth as it were a shadow, and never continueth in one stay.  
In the midst of life we are in death.   
Of whom may we seek for succour, but of thee, O Lord,   
who for our sins art justly displeased?  
Yet, O Lord God most holy, O Lord most mighty,   
deliver us not into the bitter pains of eternal death.  
Thou knowest, Lord, the secrets of our hearts;   
shut not thy merciful ears to our prayer; but spare us,   
O holy and merciful Saviour, thou most worthy judge eternal,   
suffer us not, at our last hour, for any pains of death, to fall from thee.”  
  
While it was not the full liturgical service of a Naval burial at sea, neither was it as devoid of ritual as Walton would have suspected. In fact he recognized Sparrow’s chosen texts as belonging to the Church of England’s “Order for the Burial of the Dead.” However, in this strange new context, the words took on meanings he had never noticed in them before. For the first time, Walton thought how these words might have been written for men such as these, outlaws, condemned and outcast, at home nowhere but the sea, and if so, perhaps the mercy might be for such as these, as well.   
  
Exchanging the holy book for his logbook, Captain Sparrow opened the leather cover and smoothed its parchment pages. Into the solemn stillness, he began to read the names enrolled therein, his face like flame transformed to marble.   
  
“Henry “Beeblock” Clay, Allen Cowper, Garcilaso Carillo . . .” all the way to “Bjørn Sørensen.”  
  
Walton discovered that recognizing the names of these pirates he had never met and remembering the little bits of their lives he’d been given brought the faint impression that he knew them. As he stood, an alien on this ship, set apart from the men who really knew and truly grieved these silent dead, some of whom stood stoic and unbowed, others who wept openly and unashamedly, the Naval captain felt an unexpected kinship, a sense of sharing in their loss.  
  
After the twenty-sixth name, Sparrow did not stop reading. There were three more names for which no bodies remained. Walton found himself wondering what had been their stories.  
  
In a voice that had grown progressively thicker and rougher, the pirate captain continued, “Ravi ‘Crimp’ Vilairatanasuwan, Ben Russell.” He had to pause and swallow hard before he could resume reading. “And Jonathan Isaiah ‘Jip’ Pendleton,” he finished, bowing his head.  
  
For a moment the only sounds aboard the _Black Pearl_ were those of wind and ship and water. Then Captain Sparrow raised his head, his gaze taking in his vessel and his men as if he drew strength from them.   
  
In the old familiar words, he spoke the sailor’s prayer of commitment: “We commend to Almighty God these our shipmates, and we commit their bodies to the depths to be turned into corruption, looking for the resurrection of the body, when the Sea shall give up her dead, and the life of the world to come. The Lord bless them and keep them. The Lord make his face to shine upon them and be gracious unto them. The Lord lift up his countenance upon them, and give them peace.”  
  
Here the ritual diverged from anything to which Walton was accustomed. Captain Sparrow beckoned to an individual crewman, “Asfar, it is time for you to offer the _namaz_ for your brother.”  
  
The pirate named Asfar stepped forward. He was, Walton noted, quite the most beautiful youth, tall and well-muscled, with skin like polished oak and damp black curls shining like a rook’s wing from under his cap. The faintest dark shadow of what would one day be a beard graced his fine jaw. Unlike the other pirates who bore the marks of their last terrible days in grime and blood upon their persons, this young man glowed with cleanliness from his bare feet to the crown of his head. As he and his shipmates lifted the body of his elder brother and carried it to the point on the ship’s rail that faced east-northeast towards their holy place and faraway home, his dark eyes held the bewildered suffering of an impossible loss, and his lashes were wet with tears.  
  
Walton saw the pirate Gibbs lean towards his captain.  
  
“Do you think the lad’ll manage it?” the quartermaster asked quietly.  
  
Captain Sparrow shook his head. “He has seen _namaz-e-mayyit_ offered for his father and his mother and another brother and a sister. Haroun was the last of his family. “  
  
Coming to some sort of decision, the pirate captain demanded, “Gibbs, Tearlach, I need help. Get these boots off. And somebody find me my hat—it is _mustahab_ to cover one’s head during prayer.”  
  
After a mostly undignified struggle and some under-breath cursing, Sparrow was as barefooted as his crewmember. A young pirate ran up with the sought-after tricorn. Settling his hat firmly on his head, the pirate captain said, “The congregation may participate,” and made his way to stand behind Asfar.  
  
Curiously, Walton noted that the young pirate positioned himself not at the head of his brother’s body, but at the side, and that the body was parallel to the ship’s rail rather than perpendicular. 

Then Asfar and Sparrow raised their hands and began the prayer for the dead, Asfar’s voice strong, but heavy with tears, Sparrow’s quiet, supporting, gaining strength only when his crewman faltered. The language was unlike anything Walton had ever heard, liquid and rhythmic, rising and falling like the sea.  
  
“ _Allahu Akbar. Ash hadu an la ilaha illallah wa anna Muhammadan Rasulullah.  
Allahu Akbar. Allahumma salli ala Muhammadin wa aali Muhammad, wa salli alal anbiai wal mursalin.   
Allahu Akbar. Allahummaghfir lil mu'minina wal mu'minat.  
Allahu Akbar. Allahummaghfir li hazal mayyit.   
Allahu Akbar_.”  
  
Following the prayer, as his brother’s body was lowered into the sea, the young pirate broke into wild sobbing. His captain moved swiftly to his side, putting a supporting arm around his shoulders, guiding the stumbling boy to where his mates could enfold him in their embrace.  
  
Removing his hat, Sparrow then gestured to his burial party to begin the task of interring the remainder of the dead.   
  
No ensign covered the canvas-shrouded bodies on the surface of the plank as it was tilted again and again through the shot-away port of the starboard gangway. No country or service claimed these forsaken men. Their home was this ship, their family these rough and violent criminals, thrown together by chance, the refuse of the world. Weighted with cannon balls, they slid into the sea with the smallest of splashes, leaving no trace on the trackless ocean. So swift was the obliteration of a man.  
  
When the deep blue waters had claimed the last of the dead, Jack Sparrow led his crew in the traditional Lord’s Prayer. Walton noticed that Asfar also repeated the ancient words.  
However, instead of reciting the Collect, Captain Sparrow moved to the splintered rail that framed the gap through which the bodies of his crew had gone. Looking out over the empty, pitiless sea, he spoke softly, and yet every man on the _Black Pearl_ could hear his words. “They have outsoared the shadow of our night; strife and calumny, hatred and pain can no longer touch them. They are made one with the sea, and we will forever hear their voices in all her music.”   
  
Shafts of sunlight filtered through the thinning haze, brushing the decks of the _Pearl_ and the faces of the pirates with hope, as though beyond the veil of mist those lost souls had found a welcome and a home.  
  
How strange, thought Captain Walton, that he could no longer conjure up the image of eternal flames.  
  
*****  
  
With their small curse of a pirate safely in the brig, life aboard the _Dauntless_ returned to its former monotonous calm. However, Jip’s absence was not an unmixed blessing. His carpenter and carpenter’s mate excepted, the remainder of Commodore Norrington’s crew found their existence curiously flat without the regular excitement of a pirate hunt to enliven their days.   
  
Holding to what he was rapidly coming to believe was his persistent folly, Norrington continued to search the empty seas for a sign of either the _Black Pearl_ or the _Defender_ to no avail.   
  
They spent the better part of a day becalmed, a situation, so Murtogg and Mullroy informed him, that sent their captive pirate into a huddled ball again. Apparently he was not yet convinced that the Royal Navy would not see him as a source of longed-for wind. But with nightfall, a breeze picked up briskly, and they were able to continue on their aimless way.  
  
However, when the dawn light poured her gold over the topgallants, a shout rang out from the foretop. Two ships had been sighted. By the time the light was warming the decks, the identification was assured. In all that vast and empty sea, Norrington had achieved the impossible. The ships were the _Defender_ and the _Black Pearl_. Both appeared to be brought to and in a state of disrepair, and Norrington very much feared Walton had fared badly in the encounter.   
  
But the tables were about to turn.  
  
Commodore Norrington allowed himself the slightest of triumphant smiles as he ordered all canvas spread. After so much failure, he had at last anticipated the convoluted logic that had led the pirate to this place. Finally, he had unraveled a strand in the knot that was Jack Sparrow.   
  
* * * * *  
TBC


	28. To Pluck Allegiance from Men's Hearts

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Meanwhile back on board the Black Pearl, Jack has a plan, if he can just stay awake to complete it. The events leading up to the Dauntless’ sighting of the Pearl. Once again, I must give credit to Cupiscent and her lovely story "Beads." Today’s title is brought to you from William Shakespeare, Henry IV, Part I.

Walton had spent too much of the morning with his neck craned back gazing into the sun as he watched the muscular, tattooed pirates of the _Black Pearl_ swinging aloft like acrobats, clambering about securing the wreckage of her yards and gear amidst a many-voiced chorus of chants and shouts. 

They had collected the ribbons of her sea-torn sails with care and presented them to their sailmaker who was now sewing uninterruptedly with the help of those pirates too disabled for strenuous work, themselves as stitched and parceled as their handiwork. 

The _Pearl’_ s carpenter, those pirates who were able seamen, and any other pirates with experience were hard at the skilled work, re-rigging the detached yards and roving new lifts, braces, and sheets.  When they needed help with the heavy lifting, they called on the others.

The warm air and gentle breeze rang with songs to cheer the exhausted labourers.

     “Come all ye bully sailor men an’ listen to me song.

     Oh, I hope ye just will listen, till I tell you what went wrong.

     Take my advice, don’t drink strong rum, nor go sleepin’ with a whore.

     But just get spliced, that’s my advice, and go t’ sea no more!”

Walton knew all the interminable variations of that song: verses about a sailor and his unintended five-year voyage; verses that bemoaned the sailor’s helpless inability to avoid waking up in squalid beds beside women of ill repute.  Occasionally he realized he was humming along for a few bars of the music.

At times the shanties held the old dance rhythms suitable for heavy deck work as the men stomped and sweated in unison to hoist the heavy yards aloft.

     “What shall we do with a drunken sailor?

     What shall we do with a drunken sailor?

     What shall we do with a drunken sailor?

     Ear-lye in the morning!

     Way hay an’ up she rises!

     Patent blocks o’ different sizes.

     Way hay an’ up she rises!

     Ear-lye in the morning!”

And indeed there was something of the grace and cadence of dance in the unified motion of men and ship and sea.

Other members of Sparrow’s repair crew inspected every piece of iron and wood and line aloft for wear and weakness, replacing even the most slightly suspect.  It would have been a good week’s work for a well-fed crew of experienced riggers in port, with dockside cranes to lend a hand, let alone a gang of half-starved, weary pirates.

That the crew of the _Black Pearl_ was staggering under the burden of unremitting labour was only too evident.  One of the younger pirates fainted and had to be laid on a pile of canvas shreds for half an hour.  When he could stand again, he ignored his mates’ protest and threw himself back into the work. More and more frequently, Walton would notice a man leaning against the foremast fife rail out of the way of the majority of the activity, taking hold of a belaying pin with each hand, closing his eyes and immediately dozing off—an old sailor’s trick to sleep standing up, like a horse.  Several minutes later, he would rouse himself and return to work.  Captain Sparrow made no objection to these temporary derelictions from duty.  Apparently he was well aware that his men were no longer working with physical strength or endurance but on pure, fire-tempered will alone. It was only surprising more of the pirates weren’t collapsing under the strain.

Captain Walton’s shoulders were stiff, his head was beginning to ache, and he was discovering that all that driven activity was making him itch to do something.  In fact, Walton was bored.  He had no orders to give, no decisions to make, not even a rope to splice and serve.  He was not yet at the point where picking oakum looked like a fine amusement, but he was rapidly approaching such a state.

How badly he wished for some task to take at least part of his attention from the pain chiseling at his leg.

His plundered _Defender_ bobbed tantalizingly across the narrow strip of sea separating her from the _Pearl_ , but he could not reach her any more than if she had been a league distant.  He wondered how his crew was faring.  The last time he had followed Jack Sparrow across to his ship, he had summoned the courage to petition to see them, and although Sparrow was as overwhelmingly occupied as Walton was unoccupied, the pirate captain had acquiesced to his request.  Captain Walton had found his men as well as he could have hoped, none seriously injured or mistreated, but all suffering from various levels of rage and frustration at the enforced idleness.

Really, he had no cause for complaint when he compared his fate to that of his imprisoned crew.  At least he could move about and observe something of more interest than bars and hull.  However, he determined to seek an improvement in his situation.

Taking a firm grip on his nerve, he evaded his nursemaid and approached Sparrow during a lull in the pirate captain’s incessant activity. 

“Captain Sparrow, I have a request.”

Sparrow turned with wide inquiring eyes and waved his constantly moving hands in permission to continue.

Unsure how to word his appeal, Walton forged ahead regardless.  “Sir, I know you are not in a position to trust me, but I assure you I mean you and your ship no further harm.  You also hold my crew hostage to my good behavior.”

Sparrow tilted his head and shrugged in acknowledgment.

“Now, I am certain this gentleman,” Walton nodded at his escort, “is as weary of me as I am of him.”

The pirate crewman rolled his eyes in excessive agreement, and Sparrow’s lips curved in amusement.

“He has also a pair of hands that could be better employed in serving your ship.”  Walton raised his own hands. “As have I.”

One eyebrow flew into Sparrow’s scarf. “Are you volunteerin’ to turn pirate, Captain Walton?”

Walton shook his head and smiled thinly. “Of course not. However, I am volunteering to turn able-bodied seaman—at least partially able-bodied.” He indicated his hip with a grimace. “Surely you have some small, non-vital task you could assign me that would be of use.”

“And keep you from expiring from ennui,” Sparrow noted wryly. “Alas, you have discovered my nefarious plot.”  He considered his captive and his obviously eager crewman.  “Very well. Since Ladbroc seems like to succumb to the same fate as you, Walton, I will bend my mind towards discovering such a task.”

The pirate captain surveyed the carefully choreographed chaos of his ship’s repairs. Coming to a conclusion, he summoned his quartermaster. “Mr. Gibbs, Mr. Walton here, arguably able-bodied seaman, is all eagerness to assist with tarring the _Pearl_.  See that he is suitably clad,” Sparrow ticked the gold braid on Walton’s coat with one finger, “in something that won’t give his steward a lifelong ambition to slay me for spoiling the shine.”

When Walton, divested of uniform coat, hat, wig, boots and stockings, stood on the warm planks of the _Black Pearl,_ he realized how long it had been since he’d felt this close to a ship.  His feet were likely so softened since his days as a barefoot boy that he would be regretting this mad start, but at the moment he was having to resist the urge to scamper along the deck.

“Hop to it, Walton!  Quit your woolgatherin’.” Gibbs was obviously enjoying his chance to order around a Navy captain.  “Over you go!”

And thus, Alexander Walton found himself swinging down along the port side of the _Black Pearl_ , perched on a plank hanging from a gantline, with a bucket of tar at his side and a brush in his hand.  He briefly indulged himself by setting his swing into a gentle pendulum motion, reveling in the cooling breeze on his shorn head, the sun on his back, the feel of the ship on the soles of his feet, but mindful of his pirate overseers’ wrath, he expeditiously applied himself to the task of caulking the _Pearl_ ’s hull with the dark, viscous substance.

Some time later, a grimy and tar-spattered Walton paused to consider that he was talking to Jack Sparrow’s ship.  Running his fingers along a deeply scarred groove in her planking, he found himself apologizing to her with real regret, telling her he had not understood what he was doing.  Another time he caught himself describing to her how much better she would feel when all her damage was mended.  But he pulled himself up short when he realized he was singing her a half-forgotten lullaby.  Was he losing his mind?

Somehow, he could not rid himself of the sensation that he was not repairing a man-made machine but instead participating in the healing of a living creature.  There was something magical about Jack Sparrow’s _Black Pearl._

When next Walton saw the pirate captain back on deck during his ten minute chance to devour his portion of salt horse and ship’s biscuit, courtesy of the _Defender’_ s erstwhile stores, he mentioned the odd sensation he had felt that the _Pearl_ was somehow more alive than any other ship on which he had ever served.

“Ah,” said Sparrow, pleased. “You heard her calling you. Perhaps you really will have to turn pirate.  Now you understand a little of why we serve this ship, why we fight for her, and even why we die for her.”

Walton noticed that Jack Sparrow was stroking the rail of his ship as a man might a favourite steed. No, that analogy was insufficient.  There was more of the lover in that touch.  So might a man caress the hand of his bride.  Curiously enough, recalling his work on the _Pearl,_ Walton did not find this strange.

* * * * *

The swift-flowing tide of darkness chasing the westering sun over the edge of the world found the _Black Pearl_ with almost half of her detached yards re-rigged.  Captain Jack Sparrow, basking in the satisfaction of her nearly miraculous restoration, yet knew they had so much further to go.  As twilight ushered in starlight, he again ordered nearly every oil lamp on board brought to her weather decks so that the repairs might continue throughout the night.

Now, high up on the _Pearl’_ s masts, the glint of lanterns marked where his men laboured at their Herculean tasks.  His sun-scorched and bloodied crew of hardcases had in them what it would take. They would fight to the end to save the ship, with a grit and determination given them by the sea itself—the vastness, the loneliness of it surrounding their souls.

Jack knew that his remaining men were a precious resource to be husbanded with care. At midnight, he ordered his starboard watch to their racks for three hours, their first rest off their feet in five days. They flopped and crawled into their hammocks all standing, asleep before those that had boots could remove them.  The respite would not be sufficient, but at least it would slow their downward spiral of exhaustion.  When their three hours were up, the larboard watch would have their turn.

Captain Sparrow himself had too much to oversee to allow him to turn in, no matter that he was having to batter his way through great waves of fatigue.  After all, he’d had his bit of a rest, when was it? Last night? The night before? He couldn’t rouse up the energy to remember.  Whenever it was that stubborn, mule-headed first mate of his had pitched them both to the deck plates, and his ribs in mad revolt had refused to allow him to rise.  His underhanded crew had turned suspiciously deaf to his protestations that he would be perfectly firm and fit in a brace of shakes, and Tearlach, whom Jack was entirely incapable of vanquishing in the peak of condition let alone when hampered by miscreant fractures, had deposited him in his bed as if he were an unruly child. 

Speaking of first mates, hadn’t he better look in on Anamaria, again? Come to think of it, he hadn’t seen her since she’d stood wavering and tenacious at his side during the burial of the _Pearl_ ’s dead.  Jack had only been able to meet her gaze once during that service.  To see that wounded look in her eyes was unbearable. Those canvas-wrapped bundles, from eldest to youngest, had been Anamaria’s boys, he knew. The ferocious way she drove his men was the iron-armoured surface of a vast and unswerving devotion to their well-being, something very like love.  He had felt her tremble next to him, the names he had read, some she had not known were gone until that moment, resonating like blows.  

He was a cad of unutterable proportions to have let her go alone from that—well, she would have had Tearlach, but what use was a man who wouldn’t talk to a woman who wouldn’t talk either.

Jack’s steps, sped by compunction, brought him swiftly to Anamaria’s door.

“Ana?” he called softly. “Can I come in?” Then he let himself in, that question really only being fair warning rather than a request.

At least she wasn’t sitting in the dark.  Anamaria’s small oil lantern, swaying with the _Pearl_ ’s serene motion, outlined her dusky tousled head with gold.  Propped up in bed on a folded scrap of canvas, with her leg ensconced once more on the mouldy cushion, his first mate was bent over the book he’d sent her, concentrating on what passed for reading with her—labouriously underlining each letter with her swollen, nailess finger and sounding it out.  At his precipitate entrance, Anamaria glanced up.  “Jack,” she said with faint exasperation. “You already have.”

She had been weeping.

Jack, who had never known Anamaria to cry, suffered another wrench of his conscience. 

However, the thin, watery gruel that was left of his brain refused to prompt him to his next step.  How did one set about offering comfort to Anamaria? He remembered fuzzily that lachrymose females responded well to cuddling, but his mind stuttered to a halt trying to imagine Anamaria and the verb “cuddle” in the same sentence. 

Finally, his beleaguered body settled the matter, dropping him on the space at the end of her bed.  The relief to his feet leaked out of him in a small groan.

“I’m gettin’ too old for this business of getting’ shot at and workin’ for days on end,” Jack decided. “Anamaria, love, how is it with you?”

“I’m too young for this business of spendin’ the entire day in bed,” she responded, dabbing at her nose with her sleeve.

Jack fumbled in his pocket and, for a wonder, discovered an old and wadded up handkerchief.  Triumphantly he offered it to Anamaria who eyed it dubiously but eventually accepted the gift and scrubbed away at the betraying evidence of her tears.

“How is the ship . . . and the crew?” Anamaria asked.

“The _Pearl_ is coming along nicely. Larboard watch is still workin’ on her yards.  I sent the starboard watch to their racks to catch a few winks before they trade off again.  I’m thinkin’ we’ll bend a few sails on her tomorrow and be shed of the _Defender._   The rest of the work can be finished while we’re underway.”

“Good,” Anamaria agreed fiercely. “The sooner we’re halfway ‘round the world from the Royal Navy, since you refuse to blow them to hell, the better.”

“They’re not all of ‘em that terrible,” Jack mused.  “Alexander Walton, for example. He’s just a little confused—victim of his upbringing, really.  I’ve about got him sorted out.”

Anamaria’s expression begged leave to differ.

“Did you know Walton actually volunteered to help repair the ship today?” Jack persisted. “He spent the afternoon dangling off her port side caulking her seams. Ha!  The _Pearl_ soon set him straight.  He told me he thought she was alive, and he was only feigning that he was joking.”

Anamaria rolled exasperated eyes. “Why are you doing this with Walton?”

“Doing what?” Jack stared at her, uncomprehending.

“Acting like he’s your bosom friend and boon companion.  Have you forgotten what that man did to us?” she asked, the bitterness in her voice reminding Jack that his first mate had her own terrible reasons for despising Walton and his crew.

“Hardly.”  Jack’s mouth twisted sardonically as he gestured at his ribs. “If I started to forget, this would soon remind me.”  His expression sobered. “And then there are the faces I see now in my dreams and nowhere else. I remember exactly what Walton has done to us.”

“Then why?” Her voice was plaintive.

Jack was silent for a moment, staring into the light of the lamp.  Finally, he turned back to his first mate. _“_ Precisely _because_ he and the commodore have cost us so much. That’s why,” he answered. “Walton is my fire ship, Ana. It is slow work getting the blaze lit, but by the time I launch him against Norrington and the _Dauntless_ , he will be aflame.  Other pirates send the bodies or pieces of their victims with their message to their foes— _As this one is, so will you all be. This I swear_.  But Walton, living and in health and transformed from hostile to sympathetic, is both my message and my messenger:  ‘As this one is, so will you all be.  This I swear.’”

Captain and first mate sat silently in contemplation of Jack’s audacious hope. 

Finally, Anamaria sighed. “You really think Walton will try to call Norrington off our tail? Do you think he could even if he would?”

However, Jack was in no condition to answer her. His heavy eyelids were battened shut, and he was already listing to starboard.  Her worn-out captain had been press ganged by sleep. Anamaria made a half-hearted attempt to rouse him, but he merely added a tiny snore to the persistence of his slumber. If it wasn’t just like this vexatious man to commandeer her bed for his nap, Anamaria thought irritatedly, even as she did her painful best to ease him into a more comfortable position.

Anamaria tried to scrunch herself with the least amount of discomfort at the other end of the bed.  But she did not go back to her book.  Instead, she watched Jack as he slept, all the pain and strain of the past few days smoothing from his face, returning it to a youthful purity at odds with his piratical attire.  He looked so innocent, lying there.  Damn the man.  Jack hadn’t two innocent thoughts to rub together.  And, God help her, so vulnerable. Which he did his best to pretend he wasn’t.

Ignoring the clamour of protest her injured leg set up, she leaned over to brush an unruly strand of hair from where it was fluttering over Jack’s mouth in time to his breathing.

The captain had always seemed a part of the sea to her, Anamaria reflected.  Other men might be made of clay, but surely Jack was formed from the surge and crest of waves, a creature of saltwater and spindrift; of ever-changing lights and shadows rippling over the surface of deep, dark mystery; by turns violent and serene, gentle and perilous; through whom the wind forever ran free. And so treacherously, breath-takingly beautiful. Her hand of its own volition lingered on his cheek until a brisk knock at her door caused her to snatch it away.

 “Is the captain with you?” She heard the gravelly voice of Mr. Gibbs.

“Aye, he’s here,” Anamaria answered. “Door’s open.”

The _Pearl’_ s quartermaster, looking about ten years older than he had a week ago, limped into her cabin.  His eyes took in Captain Sparrow, slumped over at the foot of Anamaria’s bed, booted legs swinging off the edge to the motion of the ship.

“So this’s where you went, Jack, y’ scallywag,” Gibbs grumbled. “I looked just about everywhere else.  Cap’n’s needed on deck,” he explained to Anamaria.

“If you can remove him,” Anamaria waved magnanimously at the somnolent Sparrow, “you’re welcome to him.” 

But Gibbs was no more successful at waking Jack than Anamaria had been.  She was suspicious that he wasn’t trying much harder, either.  They both knew the captain was in dire need of this rest.

Finally Gibbs gave up. “You’d do just about anything to get in Anamaria’s bed, wouldn’t you, you scoundrel,” he informed Jack disgustedly and unwisely. “Now what’m I gonna do?”

“Mr. Gibbs,” Anamaria said, battle fires beginning to flash in her eyes. “If the captain is unavailable, will the first mate do?”

Gibbs gave the matter a moment’s consideration then decided, “Aye, you’ll do. But can you?”

“Just help me up on those crutches,” said Anamaria, indicating the pair of t-shaped sticks leaning against the bulkhead, “and I can.”

Thanks to the obstacle presented by Jack draped over the bottom half of the bed, extricating Anamaria, encumbered by yards of crimson fabric, proved to be an intricate and exasperating maneuver for both parties involved. Anamaria had several choice and improper things to say about dresses in general and this one in particular that had even Gibbs blushing.  But at last the task was accomplished, and Anamaria, sweating and several shades paler, was perched on her crutches.

Then, while Gibbs was still close to her, Anamaria balanced on one crutch, hauled back her other arm and delivered to his mutton chop cheek a slap that stung her hand.

Gibbs shook his head to clear the ringing from his ears, moved his jaw to check if it still functioned, and then rounded on Anamaria. “What on God’s green earth was that for?” he exclaimed indignantly, rubbing at his abused side-whiskers.

“That,” said Anamaria viciously pleased, “was for the crack about the captain in my bed, Mr. Gibbs.”

Opening and shutting his mouth like a fish, as if he were going to say something but then thought better of it, Gibbs finally shrugged.  “Guess I deserved that.”

“Damn straight,” said Anamaria heading out the door. “Now, show me what the trouble is.”

* * * * *

Thus the starboard watch was stirred to new frenzies of diligence when Anamaria’s bellow, like the voice of God in a very bad mood, reached the topgallants.  “All right you laggard, good-for-nothin’ layabouts! This place has gone t’ hell since I been gone! Cap’n’s far too soft on you! Well all that’s goin’ t’ change.”

A smattering of cheering greeted this evidence that the first mate was back in form and out for everybody’s blood.

“Captain Sparrow wants sails bent on this lady tomorrow, an’ he can’t do it if she hasn’t got yards.” Anamaria continued as if she planned to summon the _Pearl’_ s dead to assist in the task. “So get your lazy arses movin’ and let’s see some work, if y’ haven’t forgot how!”

Gibbs backed off to preserve his hearing.  Anamaria at full blast and close range was enough to make a man deaf and glad of it.  Come to think of it, the lass had not shared in the crew’s sleepless battle for the ship, so she was going full sails ahead while everyone else was luffing.  She might be injured, she might be fevered, but one thing she wasn’t was tired.

Some time later, when Anamaria had put out the fires for which Gibbs had come to get Jack, and she was satisfied that the crew was sufficiently terrified into productivity, she turned and asked Gibbs, “So where‘ve you put Jack’s pet Royal Navy captain?”

“Um,” said Gibbs. “Nobody quite knows what to do with him when Jack’s not around, so we just let him go to sleep wherever he happens to be.”

“And where,” asked Anamaria with dangerous patience, “does he ‘happen to be’ right now?”

Eager to aim Anamaria in a direction away from himself, Gibbs pointed aft to where Walton lay curled up on deck at the break of the poop, a coil of rope for his pillow and a strip of canvas for a coverlet. “Over there.”

“Hmph,” said Anamaria. “I’m surprised no one has stepped on him. Jack tells me he volunteered to crew yesterday.”

“Aye, he worked as an able seaman,” Gibbs nodded. “Did a Bristol job with the caulking.”

“Nobody ever said the Navy don’t know ships,” Anamaria scowled. “They just don’t know people, is all.”  Contemplating their slumbering enemy, she decided, “If he’s crew, he should be working.”

The first mate could manage a stalk, even on crutches, Gibbs noted.

* * * * *

Captain Walton jolted out of repose expecting that he was being prodded awake by his next in a series of pirate nannies whose job it was to chivy him about the decks of the _Black Pearl_ in pursuit of Jack Sparrow.  What he was not expecting was to open his eyes on a vision of feminine loveliness.  He sighed. Perhaps he was still dreaming and need not worry about pirates and shameful captivity.

“Able seaman Walton,” snapped his dream maiden in a voice like a marine sergeant. “Time to quit your malingering and lend a hand on the halyards.”

As Walton staggered to his feet, his mind and his sight gradually clearing, he recognized in the lantern light the young woman Captain Sparrow had named the first mate of the _Black Pearl_ , the one Walton’s marines had so brutally assaulted.  She was contemplating him in the inimitable fashion of first mates everywhere as though he were something she needed to scrape off her boots.

Walton found himself having to quell the instincts that prompted him to lay his coat on the deck for her dainty feet to tread upon in favour of snapping to attention and obeying her orders. “Aye, sir!” he responded, then flushed, “I mean, Yes, ma’am.”

Injured leg notwithstanding, Walton joined the _Pearl_ ’s larboard watch with alacrity in the heavy stamp and tramp of sweating her topgallant yard up her mainmast.

In the brief moments of calm in between hauling until his shoulders were nigh to dropping off, Captain Walton watched Sparrow’s first mate curiously.  He knew the occasional woman made it to sea—captain’s wives on merchant ships, the odd sailor’s woman smuggled on board disguised as a man.  But captain’s wives kept to their portion of the ship and did little to interfere in its operation.  And women trying to pass as sailors were not able seamen let alone officers, and once they were discovered they tended to be assistants to surgeons or cooks if they were allowed to stay at all. But that a woman should rise to the position of second in command of a great ship was unprecedented in his knowledge. 

However, he had to admit that this woman, what was her name? Ah, yes. This Anne Marie controlled these boisterous, barracking pirates as easily as a man would have.  In fact, if it weren’t for the evidence of his eyes and the slightly higher timber of her voice, he would never have guessed that the orders and decisions were coming from a member of the gentler sex.  And after a narrowly diverted disaster, the spirited invective proceeding from those softly curved lips gave him cause to wonder if “gentler” was an entirely misapplied adjective, at least where Sparrow’s first mate was concerned.

Captain Sparrow’s style of command had struck him as very relaxed.  The pirate captain kept very little distance between himself and his crew, unlike a Navy captain would.  Orders were given almost in a spirit of camaraderie.  But here, in this unexpected location, was the steel and the fire in the pirate’s chain of command that Walton had assumed was necessary to keep such a diverse and unruly lot of men controlled, organized, and performing their best. 

If an unusual man like Jack Sparrow was able to captain his _Black Pearl_ so effectively, this young woman was certainly partly responsible.  Between the two of them, Walton realized, a balance had been struck, one ideally suited for the freedom-loving pirates who yet must work together under discipline to survive the harsh element of the sea and to serve the intricate creature that was their ship and their salvation.

At the first bell of the morning watch, the starboard watch headed for their berths.  Walton hadn’t expected to be allowed to turn in with them, which was just as well, because the first mate ordered him to await the larboard watch and join in again.

Then she dived into the forecastle where Walton could hear her hollering and kicking the crew awake.  “Time’s wastin’ you sleepers! Show a leg there! Tumble out!”

He heard the babble of confused and sleepy voices change into pleased excitement that appeared to be linked to their happiness at having their first mate back among them.  Their welcome did not soften her edge, however. 

“Turn out, y’ damned Dutchman! Never saw a man harder to unmoor! Let’s go boys! Someone drag that Dutchman out.”

In a clatter of crutches and a spate of orders, the extraordinary pirate woman appeared on deck, driving her crew before her, and the labour recommenced.  Before he was too busy and exhausted to think of anything more than his next step, Walton was surprised by the thought that it was no wonder Jack Sparrow had expected this woman to turn his marines into mincemeat.

By the fourth bell of the morning watch, all hands were on deck again and Walton’s aching muscles were reminding him that he’d been demanding maximum effort from them for nearly six hours now.  In the absence of orders, he sank down on the mainmast fife rail just to take his weight off his sullenly painful leg.

Above him the _Black Pearl’_ s bare poles and rigging were etched like black lacework against the inlaid stars of dawn.  The pirates had accomplished an astonishing amount of restoration work. She was only short a couple of yards now.  He imagined Sparrow would crack on her sails today and that would be the last Walton would see of her.  He would not let this manipulative ship of Jack Sparrow’s make him regret that.

A sigh that sounded as weary as he felt caught Walton’s attention.  He summoned the energy to turn and found his resting place being shared by Anne Marie . . . Anamaria, he corrected himself.  No longer did she look like the fireater who had driven this crew of rough men as a top sawyer would a team of blood cattle. Instead she looked like a girl who had been shouldering an impossible burden when she should have spent the next week in bed. 

“You did good work out there,” she admitted grudgingly when she noticed him observing her. 

“As did you,” Walton said sincerely.  He essayed a small smile, but Anamaria’s face remained stern. His social training had not encompassed how to politely address a young woman of dubious antecedents who was first mate on a pirate ship, but Walton felt obliged to try.

“Miss Anamaria, ma’am?” he ventured.

“Aye.” Her voice was not encouraging, and her face was shuttered and still, as if she were prepared for an attack.

Walton flinched away from the knowledge that she had good cause to suspect the motives of the Royal Navy, but a man of honour would not give in to such weakness. “I feel I owe you an apology on behalf of my men,” he continued with determination.  “I would make them offer you their deepest apologies in person if I thought you would care to see their faces again.”

Anamaria’s face remained expressionless, but she shook her head in the negative very slightly. “Not unless you want me to kill them.”

“Is that your wish?” Walton asked, unsure how he hoped she would answer, but feeling she was owed whatever vengeance she chose.

“Likely,” Anamaria shrugged. “But Jack doesn’t want any more killing, so you keep them as far away from me as possible.  And you make sure they don’t do it again, to anyone.”

“I imagine you have taken care of that,” Walton mused.  “But I give you my word, they will be flogged and drummed out of the fleet.  And in the future, I shall be very sure that my men are informed of the penalty for such actions.  I hope you will accept my apology.”

Anamaria collected her crutches and pulled herself to her feet.  Looking down at him with dark, stricken eyes, she said scornfully, “Captain Walton, I will accept your apology when you realize what it is you have to apologize for.  Those bastard marines didn’t succeed in taking anything from me.”

Walton followed her gaze to the point on the _Pearl_ ’s rail where her dead had been buried.

He turned back, mouth open to say . . . he knew not what.   But Anamaria was gone, making her painful way aft, leaving him to stare after her with a chest-tightening sensation he finally identified as guilt.

* * * * *

Jack was wrested from deepest slumber by the wrenching open of Anamaria’s cabin door and the shudder of her bed as his first mate threw herself down on the other half of it. Or perhaps it was the sound of her crutches hitting the bulkhead with enough force to impale the oak.

The lamp had long since burnt out, so he couldn’t see more than a shadow outline of her in the faint light coming through the door, but what he could see did not look peaceful.

“What time is it?” he asked muzzily, trying to brush the sleepy cobwebs out of his brain.

“Morning,” she said shortly. “Just after four bells.”

Jack tried to sit up then let out an anguished yelp as his ribs reminded him that they were entirely out of charity with him and were considering cutting the connection.  Forced to lay back on his right side, breathing hard through clenched teeth, Jack waited for his body to cease its bitter complaints. “Who’s looking after the _Pearl?_ ” he managed to ask.

“I was,” said Anamaria throwing her cushion at the deck with a soggy thunk. “Gibbs has her now.”

Chagrined to discover he’d slept the night away while Anamaria had done his work for him, Jack struggled once more to achieve a sitting position. With Ana’s help and a liberal application of choice oaths, he finally managed it.  He could feel her hands shaking as he clung to them with his good arm.

When she was satisfied he was upright, she collapsed back onto her pile of canvas, punching at it with small ferocious fists.

“What is it has you in such a tempest, love?” Jack asked, scooting along the edge of the bed until he could capture one of her hands in his.

“Walton!” Anamaria’s rage was muffled by the heavy sailcloth.  “I bloody hate those Royal Navy bastards!” Her voice was near to breaking.

“What did Walton do?” Jack asked, hoping it wasn’t anything for which he’d have to call the man out because frankly he doubted he was up to any knight errantry.

“He apologized.” Anamaria told the canvas.

Jack wasn’t sure he’d heard that right.  “Apologized?” he asked, seeking clarification.

“For Banks!” Anamaria spat, turning her head so that she could more efficiently breathe and talk.  “And the other one. And he offered to flog them.  As if I cared two bits about his stupid marines.  If I’d wanted them dead, they would have been.”

Jack blinked, opened his mouth, closed it, then shook his head.  When Anamaria and logic were no longer on speaking terms, it was best he just shut up and listen.

“He’s so blind.” That had definitely been a sob, buried in canvas again.

Not knowing what else to do Jack transferred one of his hands to her back and began moving it in soothing circles over her rigid muscles. 

“I gave orders . . .” Anamaria’s voice broke. 

She rolled over to face him, forcing Jack to snatch his hand away before he did anything he’d regret. Well not precisely regret . . . until later . . . when she stabbed him in his sleep.  But Anamaria was continuing, and Jack knew it was important that he hear her.

“Jack, all I could see out there, the whole time, was men who weren’t at their posts.  It was dark, and when they were beyond the light, I didn’t dare call names, for fear I’d forget and call one that wasn’t there.”

Ah. Jack knew that one—like a wound one couldn’t bear to touch and couldn’t bear to leave alone. 

“Murdering Walton won’t bring them back,” he reminded Anamaria gently.

“I know,” said Anamaria miserably.  “If it would’ve, I’d’ve already done it.”

A smile ghosted across Jack’s face. “Brave, patient Ana,” he approved.

Anamaria sat up again. “But I want to hurt him,” she said, as fierce as a stooping hawk, “so he knows.”

The hand in his clenched into a fist.

“I want him to watch us blow that brig to pieces and his crew go down,”

“But he does know, Ana,” Jack said softly. “He’s lost men before—he’s a Navy captain.  Anyone who’s ever lost a friend knows.  Walton just needs a bit of help making that connection.  They don’t teach Navy middies empathy along with navigation.  Be a bit hard to take over the world if they did, now wouldn’t it?”

Anamaria recaptured her hand and crossed her arms, rejecting comfort. “Empathy’s a big word, captain.  What does it mean?”

“Means when your enemy is cut, you bleed, Ana,” Jack said gravely. “Makes it powerful hard to kill a man.”

“Hmph,” said Anamaria, seeming more herself now. “Sounds like a bacon-brained way to win a fight.”

“That depends,” said Jack, “on what you’re fightin’ for.”

* * * * *

“Sail ho!” The call from the lookout on the foremasthead froze everyone aboard the _Black Pearl._   “Two points on her starboard quarter.”

Gibbs, who’d taken advantage of Anamaria’s presence on deck to catch his own much-needed sleep, thought it was just like the lass to hand the ship back to him in time for a crisis. 

Jack.

Where was that pestilential mad captain of theirs?  Surely he’d snored away enough of the morning.

Trundling towards the first mate’s cabin, Gibbs nearly collided with Captain Sparrow on the run.  Catching his breath against the bulkhead where he’d been shoved aside, Gibbs reflected grumpily that Jack was never where you wanted him—he was either too far away or too close.

* * * * *

In defiance of his ribs, Jack took the companionway steps to the _Pearl_ ’s poop deck two at a time. Arriving at her taffrail, he seized the glass Cotton handed him and scanned the curving rim of the sea to the southeast.  Ah. There she was—coming over the horizon, top-down; her mastheads first, then her upper yards and sails appearing one by one, growing bigger, until her hull was visible, a speck under the tall spread of canvas. 

At this great distance, he couldn’t be certain, but there was something about the way she moved, gliding under a press of snow-white sail, ripping through the waves, carrying every stitch of canvas perfectly trimmed like a water bird coming to rest on the sea—Jack never forgot the way of a ship he had sailed.  If that wasn’t Madame Behemoth, the _Dauntless_ herself, he wasn’t the judge of ships he knew himself to be.  Her heading was certainly intended to intercept the _Pearl_ and the _Defender._  

And his beautiful _Black Pearl_ was once more unable to take advantage of her superior speed to fly this trap.  Her only sails still on their yards were her head sails.  His men would have to do a day’s work of bending on canvas in a matter of hours if they were to avoid coming under that first rate ship’s guns again.

A great sea of weariness washed over him. To have fought so hard to escape, and now to be forced to do it all over again.  How much longer could they continue to be beaten down and still rise to do battle?  How could he bear to send this ship and this crew through the hellfire of the _Dauntless’_ s mighty broadside one more time?

For a long moment he stood with the glass to his eye, unseeing, not wanting to turn and let his men catch sight of him struggling with despair.  Instinctively he reached for his ship, feeling the warm strength of her under his hand, like the shoulder of a friend.  If he had no courage left to face this, she would lend him hers.

After all, they would be able to bend on some of her sails before the _Dauntless_ arrived. And this time, the _Black Pearl_ had her own teeth.  Norrington would not find her an easy prize to take if he succeeded in closing with her.

However, Jack’s only chance to prevent that engagement was to crack on as much canvas as possible in their window of grace.  Shrugging off the wave of anguish that threatened to send him under, Captain Sparrow turned to his crew.  Very well.  Time to pull another miracle out of his hat.  Time to see what these fo’c’sle hellions had in them.  With a voice like a doomsday trump, he called, “All hands on deck.  Run out her starboard batteries.  And lay aloft, boys! Let’s get her wings on this lady! Lively now!”

The ship was going back to war, and everything had to be ready.

Once again the _Black Pearl_ swarmed with activity.  Men rushed up her shrouds and onto her yards to rig the gantlines for hoisting up her sails.  Others struggled to haul the tons of repaired and stolen canvas to attach to the gantlines.

Jack was not surprised to discover that Anamaria had been unable to remain abed where he’d left her.  She haltingly thumped her way to his side just as his gunnery captain joined him.  As usual, his first mate eyed Pintel as she would a slimy, many-legged, under-rock creature, which Pintel endured with aplomb.  Also as usual, Ragetti was trailing along.  Jack generally thought of them as a single crewman. 

“Gentlemen, I want you to load with chainshot only,” Jack ordered.  “Triple shot our guns.  Remember, we don’t need her surrender. We don’t need to shred her crew to bloody rags. We only need her disabled enough to slow her down. Concentrate your fire on her masts.  I want that warship turned into a sloop!”

“One rowboat, name of _Dauntless,_ comin’ right up, Cap’n!”  Pintel gave him a snaggle-toothed grin.

Ragetti echoed the grin, his wooden eye rolling wildly. “Ol’ Norrington’ll have t’ change ‘er name to _Icarus_!” he exclaimed

Pintel stared at him blankly then swatted him between the shoulder blades. “Wot th’ ‘ell does that mean?”

“In the sea without her wings, eh?” Captain Sparrow laughed. “That’ll teach the dear Commodore to fly too close to the sun!”

The two of them jogged off, still arguing about Ragetti’s tendency to talk about things Pintel knew nothing about.

“Oh,” Jack called after them, “and if anyone can blow off her rudder for me, I’d be much obliged.”

“So, Jack,” said Anamaria, eyeing the _Pearl’_ s cannon rumbling free in their tackle with immense satisfaction, “If empathy is such a grand thing why does the _Pearl_ sail with forty-four guns? And why are you ordering them run out?”

Jack shrugged. “I said empathy makes it hard to kill, not that it makes it impossible.”

The two of them were silent for a moment watching the turmoil on deck.  Then Jack asked, “You ever seen a rattlesnake?”

Anamaria shook her head.

“ No? Rather a pretty creature, but venomous as hell.  It’s got a rattle on its tail, makes a sound like dry leaves rustling.  You hear that sound, you know it’s time to freeze. Don’t put your foot down until you know it’s goin’ in the opposite direction of that sound.  That’s the warning.  Rattler’d be just as pleased you move along and leave it alone, but if you’re the unfriendly sort and insist on interferin’, it’ll snuff you like a candle.”

“So this,” Anamaria waved at the gun crews’ feverish exertion, “is our rattle?” 

“Aye, and our fangs too,” Jack answered. “Don’t get too close, Commodore. The _Black Pearl_ is carrying poison.”

“Now _that_ I understand,” said Anamaria, baring her teeth. 

“You always were more of a weapon than a warning, love,” said Jack.

“Speaking of giving the Royal Navy a taste of its own poison,” Anamaria said. “Can I drop Walton off the side of the ship and let him swim home?”

“And they call them the gentler sex.” Jack grinned unknowingly echoing Walton’s thoughts. He reached out and tilted Anamaria’s chin with his thumb and forefinger. “I’d love to indulge you, darlin’, but the good captain and I have some final business to discuss.” 

Anamaria swatted his hand away. “More empathy lessons?” she asked, wrinkling her nose.

“Let’s just say I have a fire to light.”

* * * * *

The _Black Pearl_ was nearly ready to set sail, those few sails she had at least.  Her guns were run out and her gun crews were stockpiling shot and powder.

Captain Sparrow had joined Walton at the rail of his ship, looking out towards the _Defender,_ and beyond her to the steadily approaching _Dauntless._ The two of them stood together, a small island of stillness amidst the frantic industry.

“You will stand and fight, then?” Walton asked, heartsick that it would be his _Defender’_ s powder that would fuel the attack on the _Dauntless._

Sparrow looked at him as though he had escaped from Bedlam. “Now why would I do a fool thing like that? We are going to do our damnedest to run away.”

Walton shook his head ruefully. He was doomed always to underestimate this man, as so many had done before him.

“However, as you can see, we don’t have much to run with,” the pirate captain warned. “I’d much prefer to avoid the good Commodore, but,” the storm clouds gathered in his voice and lightning began to flicker in the depths of his eyes, “if he insists on this meeting, we _will_ pour the sweet milk of concord into hell.  James Norrington will finally discover what it is to fight the _Black Pearl_ when she is no longer muzzled and chained.”

The resolution in his voice sent a chill of ice down Walton’s spine.  He hadn’t seen this face of Captain Sparrow since the man had first taken the _Defender._ This was the face of the legendary captain of the _Black Pearl_.  The _Defender_ had been fortunate to run afoul of Sparrow’s diabolical cunning rather than his ship’s fighting prowess; however, Walton had no doubt Sparrow would make Commodore Norrington pay dearly for whatever shadow of victory the Royal Navy could seize from a broadside to broadside bombardment. If it was a victory.  The _Black Pearl_ was the smaller, less heavily armed vessel, but that did not eliminate her as the possible winner of the coming match.  The Fates of battle were fickle creatures.  However, such an outcome would cost Sparrow even more than he had already paid.

Captain Walton had been unsure how to feel when the _Black Pearl_ ’s lookout identified the approaching ship without doubt as the _Dauntless_.  Following close in the wake of his initial thrill of joy that here was relief and rescue for his beleaguered vessel and crew had come an ambiguous and unanticipated dread.  Now a traitorous desire that this ship and her valiant crew might escape unharmed warred with old habit and ingrained reactions.

The cold light of battle faded from Jack Sparrow’s dark eyes, leaving only a bone-weary tiredness.  “The time has come for us to go our separate ways, Captain Walton,” he said. “I need to return you to your ship ‘whiles yet the cool and temperate wind of grace o'erblows the filthy and contagious clouds of heady murder, spoil and villany.’  I can’t say it has been a pleasure getting to know you, and I do hope we never meet again, but you are a good man even if we must always be enemies.”

“I can honestly say I also hope we never meet again, Captain Sparrow,” Walton responded earnestly. “And may I add that I regret that the situation is not different.  Under other circumstances, I would be glad to call you friend rather than enemy.”

He held out his hand.

Jack Sparrow contemplated that hand for a moment, as though it might be a trap.  Then he nodded and met Walton’s hand with his own in a lingering motionless clasp.

“In good faith,” Sparrow said with one eyebrow arched.

“And unarmed.” Walton smiled. He released the pirate captain’s hand and touched the brim of his hat in a respectful salute.

Sparrow turned and hailed a couple of his crew.  “It’s time to say farewell to our guest,” he told them. “If you would be so kind as to return his effects and escort Captain Walton back to his ship?”

To Captain Walton’s surprise, Captain Sparrow accompanied the two pirates whose task it was to return him to the _Defender._  For the final time, Walton, again in uniform, followed the pirate captain down the plank.

When they were standing on the familiar deck of the _Defender,_ Jack Sparrow turned to Walton. “There is something I must ask of you, something I need your sworn word that you will do for me,” he said soberly.

“On condition that it does not conflict with the oaths I have already sworn to my country and to the service, I will do my best,” Walton answered carefully, unsure what was coming next.

The pirate captain nodded, “I accept your conditions.”  Then Sparrow handed him a sheet of parchment obviously cut from his log. 

Walton glanced down at it curiously. On it was a list of twenty nine names beginning with _Henry “Beeblock” Clay_ and continuing through _Jonathan Isaiah “Jip” Pendleton._

“When next you see Commodore Norrington, whatever the outcome of this present engagement, I ask your word that you will give him this roll and tell him the stories of these men,” Captain Sparrow said.

Walton looked in wondering confusion from the page naming Sparrow’s dead to the strangely outlined, serious eyes of the pirate captain himself. 

“Certainly, I give you my word as an officer of the King . . .” Walton began.

Sparrow interrupted him, shaking his head, “No. Give me your word as Alexander Walton, honourable man, and nothing more.”

“As you wish,” Walton agreed. “I, Alexander Walton, do solemnly swear that I will deliver this list of the _Black Pearl_ ’s dead into the hand of Commodore James Norrington when next we meet, and I will tell him their stories as well as I am able.”

Sparrow nodded, satisfied.

However, Walton’s curiousity was unsatisfied.  “Will you tell me why?” he asked as he carefully folded the parchment and tucked it inside the breast of his coat.

“I will,” agreed Jack Sparrow.  “It is this: Only an animal kills and does not remember. On that first rate ship of his, with its hundred guns, Commodore Norrington sometimes needs a little help remembering what it is he does.”

No wonder the Royal Navy could never capture this pirate, thought Walton with unaccustomed humility.  They would never understand him.

“Now,” said Captain Sparrow with renewed briskness.  “I wonder. Shall I leave you to wander free, perhaps release your crew, then be forced to decide whether or not to interfere in this conflict and on whose side?”

Captain Walton held out his hands, wrists together.  “Please, bind me now. I shall have a hard enough time explaining how I managed to allow you to take my ship without losing a man, without them finding me with the freedom of my ship.”

“Very well,” Sparrow assented. “Quartetto?”

The pirate crewman swiftly trussed Walton in the shade of the _Defender’_ s capstan.

“I’m sure Commodore Norrington will be along to let you loose very soon,” Sparrow reassured him. “And if we manage to sink the _Dauntless_ , with all hands lost,” he and his crewmen shared a laugh, “Then _we’ll_ come back to set you free.”

For a moment Walton regretted letting Sparrow maneuver him into accepting bondage.  Certainly he couldn’t do much with his crippled ship, but he didn’t think he could live with himself if the _Dauntless_ was destroyed.  Then he found himself meeting Sparrow’s madcap, compassionate eyes and feeling reassured.  Whatever other pirates might do, this one would never use brutality when any other option existed.  If Commodore Norrington lost his ship to this man, he would have only himself to blame.

“Good-bye, Captain Walton,” Sparrow raised a farewell hand, and pivoted to return to his ship.

“God be with you, Captain Sparrow,” Walton called after him.

His last view of Jack Sparrow was the flash of a golden grin over the pirate captain’s shoulder as the man followed his crewmembers back to the _Black Pearl._

Moments later, the plank was withdrawn and the cables binding the _Defender_ to her queenly conqueror were cut.  For some time Walton could hear the orders for bracing the _Pearl’_ s yards and the vigourous songs of her shanty singers.  Then the few patched and mended sails already bent on fell in ordered folds to tauten with the morning breeze, curving between her yards.  The _Black Pearl_ drank in the wind and slipped smoothly away from the _Defender,_ perfect in symmetry, one of the sea’s cathedrals, a creation to sail softly to the glory of God.

It was the height of irony for a captain in the king’s Royal Navy to pray for a pirate ship to escape a British war ship, but Alexander Walton did.

* * * * *

TBC


	29. Either We or They Must Lower Lie

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The final confrontation between the Dauntless and the Black Pearl begins. Please keep your arms and legs inside the ride. In the event of an emergency landing, there is rum underneath your seat. Today’s title is from Henry IV, Part I by William Shakespeare.

Once again the _Dauntless_ reverberated with the opening notes of her battle song.  To the hum of wind in her taut rigging and the swish of water turning at her bow were added the blood-chilling roll of her snare drums beating the crew to quarters and the bright shrilling of her boatswain’s fife like the first flash of lightning drawing the thunder of men to their battle stations.  The heavy percussion of bulkheads dropping away vibrated her hull like the footfalls of the god of war.

Men clambered about the masts and rigging, slinging the yards in chains to reduce the likelihood of a descent on their heads if the lifts were shot away during the coming conflict.  Others were engaged in tumbling the officers’ and crews’ sea chests into the hold where shots were less likely to penetrate, leaving the gundecks cleared for action.  Bundled hammocks were pressed into service as reinforcement of the _Dauntless’_ s bulwarks to protect her weather deck gun crews from the deadly explosions of splinters.  Flanking the great guns, hillocks of cannon-balls grew along with huge masses of wadding.  Ship’s boys hauled buckets of sea water for use in sponging the powder-singed barrels and buckets of sand to hold the smoking slow-matches. This time there would be no storm to quench the fires started by red-hot shot, so Norrington had ordered firescreens placed and the decks spread with sand that would be kept watered.

Once again, Gilbert Samuels directed the transformation of mess tables into amputation tables and the placement of cots for the injured while he arranged the array of his grim instruments for greatest efficiency.  This time, there was no hope that the _Black Pearl_ would be unable to fire back.

Commodore Norrington stood on the quarterdeck of the _Dauntless_ , as tense as her canvas itself, taking his eyes off the pirate ship only to cast them briefly over the disciplined havoc his orders had created.

The _Black Pearl_ crouched like a lioness over her kill, wounded and all the fiercer for it.  This time the _Dauntless_ would feel teeth at her throat if she wished to take that dark ship _._ Through his glass, Norrington could see the pirate’s guns already snarling in their open ports, hungry for a taste of the blood of her attackers.

Yet this was Jack Sparrow they were pursuing after all, and nearly an hour after they had first sighted the two ships, Norrington was unsurprised to see the _Black Pearl_ , with her yards yet incompletely rigged and her few bedraggled sails bent on, ease away from the _Defender_ and plunge towards the horizon, fleeing with heartbreaking sluggishness, like a broken-winged gull forced to paddle when she should have flown.

The _Dauntless_ , who could be finicky about her weather and seas, was in a particularly good humour in this fresh breeze, making almost six knots.  At her present rate, they would reach the _Defender_ in about two hours.  The _Black Pearl_ could scarcely be making two knots, which would bring them upon her in under three hours.  And yet, during those hours, the pirates would be cracking on as much sail as they possibly could, gradually increasing her speed. 

Under ordinary circumstances, Norrington would not have considered bending on studding sails. The wind was just a shade too brisk. However, if he could pull a half a knot or even a knot more speed out of the _Dauntless_ , he might shave off as much as half an hour of pursuit.  Any time he could seize to the _Dauntless_ ’s advantage was worth its weight in gold sovereigns when dealing with Sparrow’s extraordinary ship.  Coming to a decision Norrington summoned Lieutenant Gillette.

“Have the men bend stuns’ls on her, lieutenant,” the commodore ordered. “Let us see what the old girl has in her.”

“Stuns’ls, aye, sir.” Gillette grinned. Then he bounded down the companionway steps in a flurry of orders that sent some men racing up the ratlines to loose and run out the studding sail booms on the ends of her yardarms and others to the sail locker for the extra sails that would add over ten thousand square feet of surface area to her already perfectly bellied canvas.

However, in minutes, Gillette was back on the quarterdeck, all smiles clouded over by storm. “Commodore, I think you should see this.”

Joining his first lieutenant at the sail locker, Norrington’s puzzlement changed to apprehension as he caught sight of his sail master.  Mr. Anglesey had turned an unhealthy shade of magenta that clashed badly with his ginger hair. In apopleptic fury, he was handling what appeared to be scraps of ripped canvas. 

“He’s worse’n moths, sir,” the man spluttered, holding out the pieces to the commodore. “Eighteen sails as full o’ holes as a fishin’ net!”

“Apparently we did not continue searching for Jip’s handiwork long enough,” Gillette added, anger sizzling in his voice. “Now we know what he needed that knife for.”

“I see,” said Commodore Norrington in a frigid, quiet tone that had the nearby gawkers scattering for the far ends of the ship.  “Very well, then.  Gillette, inform the men on the yards that the studding sail booms are to be taken in, for now.  Mr. Anglesey, gather as many men as you need to mend those sails.  Our gun crews will not be needed for another three hours.”

“And what do we do about Jip, sir?” Gillette dared to ask.

“He will remain where he is,” Norrington said, his face chiseled into granite. “There will be time enough to deal with him later.”

Lieutenant Gillette thought that he would not want to be that enterprising small pirate when later arrived.

* * * * *

The _Pearl_ ’s upper gun deck was swathed in the nearly a ton of heavy canvas that made up her main course, lying athwartships, tied fore and aft by its headrope to keep it taut.  With the ship underway, Captain Sparrow had decided that her fragile sails should be furled before being run up to the yards to give them their greatest chance of arriving there untwisted and unshredded. 

However, these were not sails neatly stowed in all their gear with bending strops seized in place.  These sails were the culmination of the ceaseless labour of his sailmaker and those of his injured crew who yet had the use of their hands, cobbled together from the _Defender_ ’s much smaller sails and what had been left of the _Pearl_ ’s original canvas after she had been laid on her beam ends, bombarded by the Royal Navy, draped in her spare sails to slow her leaks, driven staggering under it through storm and sea, and the final betrayal, dismasted by her crew.  In sum, these resurrected sails were piebald instead of black, and they scarcely had their reef bands, cringles, and head ropes attached—far from being ready to bend on. 

Even now, as the _Dauntless_ loomed larger and more ominous, so swift and deadly under her perfect cloud of canvas, the spray off her cutwaters spangling her bow, Jack’s crew toiled with frantic care to secure gaskets and robands, head- and reef-earings,  beckets and toggles, blocks and clew-garnets, leech- and buntlines, tacks and sheets. 

Even Duncan, whose broken arm was splinted and trussed in a sling and whose other arm, gashed to the bone by that snapped clewline, could scarcely move, had teamed together with Kursar who had lost an arm almost to the shoulder in the _Defender’_ s first raking firestorm _,_ and together the two of them were crouched on the deck painstakingly stitching grommets, each providing the hand the other lacked.

Jack had to pause a minute to assure himself that his voice would not betray the lump of wadding that was making his throat ache and his eyes sting as he laid one hand on Duncan’s rioting dark curls and the other on the thinning grey of Kursar’s head.  And oh, to have two hands to do it with!  “Lads,” he said, “Even with one hand apiece, you’re worth five men to me.”

Their faces turned up to him, Duncan’s smooth with youth and Kursar’s wrinkled with age, but equally indomitable in the midst of grief and pain—equally radiant as they smiled in pleasure at the praise.

“Cap’n,” they acknowledged him.

Jack ruffled their hair as though they were children. “Good work, men.  I thank you.”  Then he continued on his way towards the companionway.

Duncan raised an eyebrow at Kursar and commented so that Jack could hear him, “Not a terribly good judge of age, our captain.”

Kursar shook his head in agreement. “Not real good at his arithmetic either.”

The two men exchanged grins and bent once more over their task.

Jack thought it likely he might burst something vital what with laughter added to all the other overwhelming emotions.  God, how he loved these men.

He paused at the top of the steps to look out over his _Black Pearl_.  Normally her deep and narrow, clean-lined beauty slipped through calms and rode the wild winds with a joyous ease, but now her ragged foremast sails and her jibs running on Anamaria’s stays were bearing her bow down in the absence of balance from her aft sails so that even in this light sea, she was making heavy going of it, fleeing as though mired in clay.  Jack considered briefly whether to augment her speed with the sweeps, but dismissed the idea as impractical. Too few of the oars remained aboard and unpressed into other services.  Too few of his men remained to spare them for rowing.  Too little stamina remained in the men to pit them against the _Dauntless_ running before a fair wind.

It would have to be her sails, however long it took to rig them.  At least the weather was cooperating with their efforts, the breeze not strong enough to bring their adversary upon them for another few hours nor to pick up the canvas and tear it from their grasp.

Returning to his customary position on the _Black Pearl’_ s taffrail, Jack kept watch on the approach of the _Dauntless_.  Commodore Norrington was proceeding cautiously, not stretching his ship as he could have.  Now why might that be?  Jack wondered, scanning the oncoming ship through his glass.  If he’d been the good commodore, seeking to chase down the fastest ship in the Caribbean, he would have ordered on her stuns’ls at first sight of his quarry. 

Ah! There they were then.  Jack observed the crew of the _Dauntless_ mounting her yards to run out her studding sail booms.  Time to readjust his estimate of how long they had until all hell rained down upon them.   

A few minutes later, a baffled Jack Sparrow observed those same booms being drawn back in.  Surely Norrington hadn’t decided the maneuver was too risky?  Granted Madame Behemoth was a bit of a tub at times, but she certainly had what it took to handle a little more sail on this moderate day.  Frowning at the mystery, Jack mentally added back the minutes, each more precious than diamonds, to their window of survival.

* * * * *

Since their gunpowder first-mate had such an affinity with things that exploded, Anamaria was in charge of overseeing the _Pearl_ ’s cannon, making sure they were in order and ready to defend the ship, particularly those they had liberated from the _Defender_ to replace their own damaged guns.  Gibbs could hear her harrying their short-handed gun crews, punctuating her orders with thumping crutches.

Given his own affinity for running away from a fight, Gibbs was coordinating the attempt to bend on enough sail for them to escape the _Dauntless,_ who was entirely overly endowed with firepower.  Gibbs was of the opinion that this hasty, reckless manner of doing battle was a complete mistake. 

“Here’s how I see it,” he informed Tearlach.  

The two of them were catching a few gasps of air after swaying away on the line that had raised the bundled canvas to the _Pearl_ ’s main yard, while the topmen stretched the sail along the yard and ran the head earrings out to the yard ends.

“You take two ships, arm ‘em with lead and iron, blind ‘em with smoke, and set ‘em to pitching hunks of metal at each other every which old way.  A man unlucky enough to get in the way gets his head blown off.” Gibbs pantomimed a shot taking off his head. 

Tearlach made a disgusted face.

“If his luck is in, he escapes,” the quartermaster continued. “Same goes for the ships. A shot, fired at random into the smoke takes down your mainmast. Another unships your rudder.  And there you are, dead in the water. Then your enemy pronounces himself the winner. But that honour actually belongs to the law of gravity.”

Tearlach tilted his head in acknowledgement.

“So,” finished Gibbs with triumphant logic, “if a battle is won by the chance fall of a bit of lead or iron, wouldn’t it make more sense and less bother and ruination just to toss a shilling and let heads win?”

Tearlach grinned and shrugged. He appeared perfectly recovered from the back-straining effort.

Gibbs didn’t yet have his breath back. Really, he was too bloody old for this sort of thing.  But it was time to haul on deck the third of a ton of main topsail and get it ready to bend on.

“Bah,” said Gibbs. “When this is over, I’m buyin’ a farm.”

* * * * *

As the _Black Pearl_ ’s motley main course blossomed from its yard and caught the wind, Commodore Norrington made the decision not to heave to and investigate the condition of the _Defender._ The signals he had ordered run up remained disquietingly unanswered by the little brig, lying forlorn and silent on the azure breast of the sea.  What had happened to Walton and his men remained unknown, but Norrington feared what vengeance the pirates might have taken on those who had done them so much harm.

If Jack Sparrow had lived through their first engagement, Norrington realized he would have hope that at least some of the _Defender’_ s crew might have survived capture by the _Black Pearl._   But he had no way of knowing whether or not Sparrow’s light touch as a pirate would be the hand at the helm any longer. 

Nevertheless, if the _Dauntless_ wished to take the _Pearl_ before she recovered her renowned speed, they would be forced to abandon the _Defender._ And Commodore Norrington knew he would be a fool to count on their being able to return for her.  It was the vilest arithmetic, but the _Dauntless_ could not spare even a surgeon’s mate in light of her upcoming battle.  He would do for Walton what he could—send over a detachment of marines with provisions in the pinnace and pray that the _Dauntless_ would be in fit condition to rescue the _Defender_ soon.

* * * * *

Captain Alexander Walton loved every plank of the deck of his _Defender_ —except for the ones he was currently sitting on.  While acknowledging that Sparrow’s crewman had left him in as comfortable a position as could be hoped, any position, held for this long on this hard a surface was bound to become wearisome.  He was also excruciatingly tired of the view—cloudless blue sky, sectioned by the lines of remaining rigging, the bulwarks and the open ports formerly occupied by the _Defender’s_ weather deck cannon.  Even a bird would have provided some variety, but no birds appeared.

He had called out to his trapped crew when he’d first been left aboard his ship, but the intervening decks made communication an ear-straining, throat-wrenching endeavour.  After ascertaining that all of them continued to be well and delivering the welcome news that the _Dauntless_ had found them, he had long since ceased to strain his voice other than to occasionally report their status, which was unchanging.  The only sounds keeping him company were made by the _Defender_ as she chirped and hummed the faint melody she reserved for moments of complete inaction. 

The sounds of creaking oarlocks brought Walton to startled alertness, and he realized the warm sun and gently rocking ship had lulled him to sleep.  He heard voices and the sound of a small hull thudding up against the _Defender._

“Hello!” Walton hailed, attempting to get to his feet and run to meet the men he could hear clambering up the ship’s ladder, in spite of the fact that he was bound.  Returned abruptly to reality by the insistence of the ropes, he waited with little patience for his deliverers to appear.

“There’s someone up there!” he heard an excited voice exclaim, and then the genial countenance of one of the _Dauntless’_ s marines peered over the edge of the starboard gangway. 

“Over here!” Walton called, frustrated at being unable to wave.

“Captain Walton!” exclaimed the marine, leaping onto the deck. “Good to see you, sir!”

He was followed over the top by eight of his fellows who immediately set about releasing the captain.

The extended time sitting in a cramped position had left Walton as seized up as a rusty bolt, and he had to swallow his pride in order to allow two of the husky youths to hoist him to his feet where he clung to one of the bars of the capstan until he was sure his legs would hold him.

The young man in charge of the marines introduced himself as Corporal McKenzie.  His eyes took in the empty, unmarked decks of the _Defender_ with professional paranoia as though he expected a trap.  “What happened here? Where is your crew?” he asked.

“My crew, yes,” Walton said, rubbing his wrists. “We must release them immediately.  They’ve been locked up for days, but otherwise, all are well or soon will be.”

From the astonished looks the marines exchanged, Walton gathered that they had been prepared for scenes of carnage and torture, not this rather anticlimactic lack of incident.  He could see unasked questions seething in their eyes.

“The pirates raided us for supplies and repairs for their ship, but otherwise did us very little harm,” Walton explained.

“We have medical supplies, provisions, some powder and shot,” Corporal McKenzie said, recollecting himself.   “Beacon, Jefferson, get that pinnace hauled aboard.  The rest of you, lend Captain Walton a hand in seeing to his crew.”

A pinnace.  Walton was pleased. The _Defender’_ s boats had gone the way of all her other gear, inadequately replacing the _Pearl_ ’s losses.  It would be good to have a smaller vessel again.

As two of McKenzie’s men jogged back to the gangway port, Walton beckoned to the six others to follow him as he made his way awkwardly down to the hold where the pirates had incarcerated his crew.  When they arrived, they found that Lieutenant Armstrong had nearly succeeded in staging a break from gaol using one of the doctor’s instruments.  The coping on that hatch was going to need replaced before it would be useable again.

As soon as the marines from the _Dauntless_ finished freeing the hatch cover, the lieutenant shoved his way through and scrambled onto the deck. “Captain Walton, are you all right?” he exclaimed, catching his commanding officer by the shoulders, as though he had suspected Walton of deceiving his crew in order to raise morale. 

“I am perfectly well,” Walton assured him returning the grip.  “Jack Sparrow treated me with all courtesy.  And the leg is much better.” 

“That is excellent news.” Armstrong beamed, but as his eyes travelled over their plundered ship, his smile faded, and he shook his head. “I do not know whether we have been excessively lucky or excessively unlucky.”

Captain Walton, watching all his crew—all of them—even those injured, emerging from the _Defender_ ’s hold, could only feel the luckiest of men.   “We can repair and re-provision the ship,” he told Armstrong. “Everything of real value has been spared to us.”

* * * * *                                         

It was no longer necessary to use the glass in order to watch the inexorable approach of the _Dauntless,_ her royal blue hull gilded gold and glorious, her pyramid of sails pure and perfect white, trim and deadly, the most powerful warship in the Caribbean.  Captain Jack Sparrow could count each one of the fifty guns in her broadside, could even tell the twenty-four pounders from those thirty-two pounders that hadn’t been involved in their first encounter.  This time there would be no storm to bury those lowest gun ports.  With only half her broadside power, the _Dauntless_ had been able to pound the _Black Pearl_ to her ribs.  Now they would discover what it meant to face her unrestrained strength.

“She’s got the weather gage of us, so she’ll be able to choose her moment.  We cannot avoid this engagement,” he observed to his first mate, suppressing the urge to go beleaguer his already straining crew into making sails from figments of their imagination faster.

“Aye, but she won’t find it so easy to disengage now, will she?” Anamaria grinned fiercely, casting a proprietary eye over the weather deck gun crews, stripped to the waist, muscles rippling like molten bronze as they hauled on the tackles of their mighty charges. “We’re goin’ t’ make that Norrington regret he ever even heard of the _Black Pearl.”_

“Well, that’s about fair, since I certainly regret ever hearing about him.” 

Jack’s gaze lingered on his crew as well, seeing not the vigorous beauty and strength of them but the painful marks of their last meeting with the ship now bearing down on them—the bandages dark with old blood, the bruises mottling and distorting flesh, the fiery stripes of wounds not deemed worth the time to stitch up. Seeing the pale sternness of their faces, their eyes clouded with the choked thoughts of their hearts.  Seeing the empty spaces where twenty-nine of his men and boys no longer worked beside their mates.  How Jack wished with ferocious futility that he could preserve those yet remaining to him.

Jack imagined Commodore Norrington, who even now would be standing on the quarterdeck of the _Dauntless_ , observing the _Black Pearl_ with the same dry taste of danger in his mouth, the same half-strangled prayers for the safety of his men.

“’They come like sacrifices in their trim,’” Jack quoted softly.  “’And to the fire-eyed maid of smoky war all hot and bleeding will we offer them.’” 

Anamaria curled her lips back over her teeth in a snarling smile, as pitiless as an avenging Fury.  “Let them come,” she hissed.

Turning to contemplate his first mate, Jack reflected that he had never seen her more splendid, her black hair twisting in the wind like flames, the crimson dress enfolding her like a flag offering no quarter, her disfiguring injuries and crutches only making her seem more valiant.  “You’re a bit of a fire-eyed maid, yourself, love,” he commented.

But if Anamaria could achieve some measure of comfort from entering a battle with the ability to slay the men who would be slaughtering them, all Jack Sparrow troubled heaven for was some impossible way to unknit this cursed knot of all-abhorred war that was tightening around their necks like a noose.

* * * * *

Commodore Norrington watched as the _Black Pearl’_ s main topsail caught the wind and filled.  Already she had her headsails, her main course, her spanker and now this topsail bent on.  The _Dauntless_ would come up alongside her within minutes and it would not be too soon.  Sparrow’s ship could fly farther and faster with fewer sails than any other ship in Norrington’s experience.  They could not afford to let her get her wings back.

Norrington could see figures on the pirate ship, tiny clots of humanity spread out along her main topsail yard or slipping down her shrouds, bits of faraway motion and life surrounding her deadly guns or pacing her rail observing the approach of the _Dauntless._   He wondered if one of them was Jack Sparrow, and if so what the man was thinking right now.  No one could say what sort of a battle this unusual pirate was likely to wage.  No one but Norrington had ever managed to pin him into an engagement. Would Sparrow’s cunning extend to tactics and strategy?  Or had his dependence on his swift ship left him inexperienced in the art of war?  Would he make fatal mistakes, or would he match the Royal Navy in skill?  Not for the first time, the commodore wished he knew anything at all about Sparrow’s past.  Who had he been before he was Captain Jack Sparrow?  What elements had gone into the forging of such a man? And was he even in command of the _Black Pearl_?

In the end, the questions could not matter.  They would find out the measure of the _Black Pearl_ and whoever now captained her in the next few hours. And they would pay in blood for the knowledge.

The _Dauntless_ had been cleared for action.  Bevington’s marines once again clustered in her tops.  The master at arms had distributed the personal weaponry in the event the _Dauntless_ was boarded.  And once more, their ensign fluttered its defiance against the sky.  It was time.

The ship’s gunnery crews poured the measures of powder into the bores of her cannon then rammed the wadding home, and heavy shot rumbled down the throats of guns like the echoes of promised thunder.  Then would come the priming of the touch holes with a small amount of power, and the guns would be run out, ready to fire on Norrington’s command.

Except it didn’t happen. 

Commodore Norrington could hear the change in the sound of his ship, setting his teeth on edge, even before he could make out the voices raised in consternation and wrath.  The orderly activity around the guns snarled into confused tangles.

“Gillette! Groves!” Norrington snapped, although his lieutenants were already pelting to investigate. “Find out what the problem is, and fix it!”  They would be under the _Pearl’_ s guns in minutes.  He needed the _Dauntless_ ready to fight.

Gillette was back almost immediately, his face gone ashen.  “Commodore, that little bastard has cloyed the portside cannons.  Stopped up their touch holes with metal spikes, he has.  None of them are going to fire until someone drills them out again.”

Groves returned almost on his heels, his darker complexion several shades paler, the horror in his expression surely a mirror of Norrington’s own. “The whole portside battery is gone, Commodore,” he confirmed Gillette’s report.

Their words hit Norrington’s chest like a shot.

“Good God!”

Frost-bound terror gripped him by the throat—clear, pure, and vast—a fear that swept from horizon to horizon and down to the depths of the sea leaving room for no other thought, no other feeling.  It was not a fear for his own life, but for the lives of the six hundred souls in his care, from the oldest tar to the youngest ship’s boy.  If Norrington had shied away from imagining Jack Sparrow’s emotions with his ship bearing down on the _Dauntless_ and his powder drowning in his holds, he knew now to the bitterest dregs of his soul.

Fortunately, the shipmaster in Norrington was not as paralyzed as the rest of him, and the orders sprang to his lips without his conscious volition. “Helm down, hard alee!” But even as he gave the commands for the _Dauntless_ to tack away from the _Pearl_ , he knew it was too late. Approaching from the windward side, with her massive inertia, the _Dauntless_ was committed to a course that would take her in range of Sparrow’s broadside for nearly half an hour, more than sufficient time for the _Black Pearl_ to lay waste to her and to all aboard.

* * * * *

The air aboard the _Black Pearl_ vibrated with anxious intensity, as though everyone had taken a deep breath half an hour ago and still hadn’t let it out.  Abaft her starboard beam, the _Dauntless_ dominated the horizon, implacable and growing nearer. 

Anamaria, pausing to lean on the railing in an attempt to give her arms a rest from the crutches, glared at the approaching Royal Navy ship and whispered under her breath a very ancient, very powerful curse she reserved for when she really wanted the universe to destroy something. It was certain the _Black Pearl_ was going to need some help from somewhere to survive this battle.

Although her crew had laboured unceasingly on the sails, the _Pearl_ was still losing ground.  Even now, her mizzen topsail and her main topgallant sail were vying for deck space with the recoil paths of the guns.  The men would be bending those sails amidst the hail of fire from the _Dauntless_.  To add to their challenges, the sails that were already cracked on remained in disarray.  The men were having to negotiate around scores of braces, sheets, halyards, clewlines, and buntlines still lying on the deck, needing to be coiled and hung on their belaying pins. 

Whether they would then be in any condition to rig and run up her stay sails was being given long odds amongst those of her boys who would gamble about anything.  She’d caught Marty going around with a quill and tablet recording bets.  He’d tried to get her to place half a quid on the relatively sure thing that the Captain would hold fire until the _Dauntless_ ’s opening salvo, but Anamaria had told him the only bet she’d be placing was on how fast she could kick his sorry ass down the hatch.  Marty had dodged out of her way.  Then he had recorded her bet.  Jack, on the other hand, had wanted to put money on when he’d order the guns fired, but Marty wouldn’t let him, informing him that he wasn’t allowed to bet on anything he could control.  So Jack had placed his bet on Marty’s ass-kicking instead.

Now the captain was back hovering at his ship’s taffrail, hands gripping the scarred wood as though he could hold his ship safe with an act of will alone, watching the _Dauntless_ aimed at his heart like a single well-placed shot. 

For a moment Anamaria wanted only to sink to the ground, give in to pain and exhaustion, and just wait for it all to end—whatever terrible things were yet to come, she wanted them to be over.  Shaking herself in irritation, Anamaria mentally informed her leg that it wasn’t having any say in what she did or felt, and she tried to encourage herself again with the knowledge that if they were about to get shot to hell, at least this time the Navy wasn’t going do it without some damnation in return. However, for the first time, Anamaria thought she might understand Jack Sparrow’s intense hatred of bloodshed. Jack had called her a fire-eyed maid, which was at least better than some of the poetry he’d spouted at her, but the only fire she could feel in her eyes right now was the burn of unshed tears.

“Hold steady, my lovely lads,” Captain Sparrow’s voice carried down the ship, as calm as though he were discussing a routine change of course. “Let’s wait for our quarrelsome companion to get into range.”

Anamaria scowled at the ship, pacing them several hundred yards away.  Surely they were within the _Dauntless_ ’s range already.  Why hadn’t Norrington fired?  She noticed Jack was using the glass again, every line of him speaking storm-taut alertness, staring out at the Royal Navy vessel as though he imagined he could read Norrington’s mind if he could just look him in the eye.

But they didn’t have time for mind-reading.  Every minute that the _Dauntless_ drew closer, bearing whatever destruction the commodore had planned for the _Pearl_ , was leaving them with less and less opportunity to make good on Jack’s defensive plan.

“Jack,” Anamaria said urgently. “We’ve got to fire now! If she gets any closer, chain-shot’ll do us about as much good as tossing coconuts.”

“No,” Jack said. “Not yet, Ana.  If Norrington was going to fire on us, he would already have started.  Those thirty-two pounders of his have a range of over two thousand yards.  Something’s gone wrong over there. I have no idea what.” 

If something over there was keeping that bloody warship from firing, something had gone right, in Anamaria’s opinion.  But more likely Norrington was just awaiting his moment.  She had to get some sense into Jack’s head while there was still time.

“Maybe it has,” she said in frustration, “but you have no idea when it will go right again, either, and then we’ll be staring in their gunports with no way to aim for their rigging.  You want that ship disabled, but if she gets any closer before she fires, we’ll be broadside to broadside, in pitched battle for as long as it takes us to run out of shot or men.”

Jack lowered the glass and met her eyes with a troubled gaze. “You’re right, love,” he acknowledged.

“So, can I give the order to fire?” Anamaria prompted, her body poised for flight.

The torn look in Jack’s eyes wrenched at her heart.

 “I’ll not be the one to start this thing,” he said softly. “God knows, I have not sought it out.  If there’s a chance we can escape without further bloodshed, without further damage to the _Pearl._. . . Don’t you see?  I have to take that chance.”

Anamaria opened her mouth to attempt something persuasive enough to make their insane captain see sense, but she was interrupted by Gibbs’ arrival.

“Jack, y’ daft bugger, why haven’t we started whittlin’ away at that oversized gunboat before she blows us t’ kindling?” The quartermaster voiced her thoughts exactly.

“He’s gone all fuckin’ chivalric on us,” Anamaria snapped in vexation.  What would move Jack Sparrow to action?  She whirled and swung over to the rail overlooking the waist of the ship. “Kursar,” she bellowed, “get your bloody arse up here!”

“‘Honour pricks me on, yea, but how if honour pricks me off?’” quoted Jack whimsically behind her back.

Gibbs knew better than to pay Jack any mind when he started quoting the Bard of Avon at them. “We’re pirates!” he insisted. “What use is it, following rules that just get us deader than the next man?  You’ve always been a man to cheat, Jack.  Now’s not the time t’ rethink your philosophy!”

Jack raised his glass again and turned back to observing the _Dauntless._ “I’m not following rules, at least not somebody else’s rules.”

Gibbs rolled his eyes and shook his whiskery head, throwing up his arms in exasperation. “God preserve me from turning pirate with a man of principle!”

Anamaria stormed back to the fray, Kursar in tow looking bewildered.  She had to pull up right next to Jack so she could grab his coat without losing her crutch and make him turn back to them, which meant she was in his face when he surrendered to her force and met her eyes.

“Look at this man, Jack,” Anamaria’s voice was intense with conviction. She gestured towards Kursar, who shrugged apologetically at his captain. “Last time the _Dauntless_ picked a fight with us, he lost an arm. Ain’t nothin’ bringin’ it back.” Her voice lashed with barely restrained fury.  She took a step towards Jack, who held his ground even though they were nearly nose to nose.  “If we slow that bloody war ship down, maybe a few more men lose some limbs. Maybe a few more die.  But if we do not slow her down, most of ‘em will be cold before nightfall and the rest on the gallows.” 

She had meant for the anger alone to sound in her voice, not for the crack of grief that opened in her words.  But perhaps honesty would work better with Jack than wrath for she saw him flinch and give ground before her pain that he would never have given to her fury.

Jack turned to look at Gibbs. “Do you agree with her?”

“Aye,” he nodded gravely, “the lass has the right of it. Now’s our only chance.”

 Anamaria hated to see the way Jack’s face shuttered closed, hated to see that weight descend on his shoulders.

“Very well,” he agreed, accepting their decision. “We have a few more minutes during which the _Dauntless_ will be in optimum range for chain-shot.  If nothing has changed, I will give the order to fire on her masts before that time is up.”

* * * * *

TBC


	30. Never Did Captive with Freer Heart Cast Off His Chains

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The final confrontation between the Dauntless and the Black Pearl ends. I know you thought it never would end. Please keep your arms and legs inside the ride. In the event of an emergency landing, there is rum underneath your seat.

In the next few moments something dramatic was bound to happen, Jack decided. Either the  _Dauntless_  would fire, the  _Black Pearl_  would fire, or Anamaria was going to spontaneously combust. Although he had not taken his eyes off Norrington’s ship, he could hear his first mate pacing behind him, the beat of her crutches like the tense percussion of Navy drums. She said nothing more, but he could feel her adamantine will urging him to unleash the might of the _Pearl_ ’s cannon while there was still time.  
  
The gun crews arming his starboard batteries were as tightly strung as drawn crossbows, requiring only their captain’s word to touch off the conflagration that would deliver a rain of death and destruction upon Norrington’s gallant ship and crew. Retribution indeed, some might say.  
  
And yet, there were faces of men aboard that Naval vessel that Jack still remembered: the pleasantly bumbling set of marines who had enjoyed his stories and who had hauled him off to the  _Dauntless_ ’s brig; the young lieutenant who had been so thoughtful as to offer him refreshment after that grueling passage to Isla de Muerte and who’d called him “Captain”; and of course, the commodore, himself, resplendent like his ship in blue and gold and white, an honourable foe and a good man. The others began to blur a bit in his memory, but he wished none of them any harm. The images of his  _Pearl_ ’s chainshot smashing into those regal masts, fouling those intricate lines, blasting shards into living bodies and leaving them maimed or dead haunted Jack’s eyes when he closed them.  
  
Then when the  _Pearl_  attacked, whatever was restraining Norrington would cease, and the  _Dauntless_  would return ten-fold what she had been given.   
  
The weight of that knowledge dragged on his heart like an anchor chain.  
  
* * * * *  
  
In the eternal, panic-cloyed moments following Norrington’s order to change course, the  _Dauntless_  had never appeared so immoveable, as if the sea, becoming viscous, clung to her sides. Her vast bulk refused to respond to the urgent efforts of her crew with anything more than her customary grand deliberation. If the men on her decks had reason to dread the mute and menacing guns of the  _Black Pearl_ , the  _Dauntless_  remained serenely indifferent to her peril.   
  
Commodore Norrington had to resist the urge to order out the log to test whether his ship was making any headway at all.  
  
His men hauled on the  _Dauntless_ ’ halyards until their hearts cracked with the effort of leveling her yards around square on their new heading, but the weight of the wind in her canvas seemed an unyielding wall.  
  
For Norrington, the only swift movement in all this aching lethargy was the struggle of his heart against his ribcage in dread anticipation of the lightning flash and low volleying thunder of cannon fire that would signal the oncoming storm of death.   
  
* * * * *  
  
“On the mizzen, set your gaff topsail!” Jack ordered.  
  
A breathless cheer ghosted across the decks of the  _Black Pearl_  at this evidence that one more sail was ready to add its force to their escape.   
  
“Captain. Captain, we’ve got to fire now, or we’ll lose our chance!”  
  
Gibbs’ urgent voice at his elbow reminded Jack that Anamaria wasn’t his only impatient crew member. He was going to have a ticklish job keeping them all in check.   
  
“Hold your fire, boys,” he soothed his gunners, awaiting his slightest sign with the offering of their stout hearts in their hands. How he prayed he could avoid calling on that sacrifice. And yet every minute he delayed, it grew more likely their gift would be in vain.  
  
If only he could give his dark lady sufficient sail so that she might deliver them all from this looming death.  
  
The mottled canvas rumbled down, arched out, and cracked full of air. Jack felt his heart grow taut with the strain between fear and joy as he felt his ship seize just so much more of the tender-taken breath of the wind. “On the mizzen, sheet her home!” he called.  
  
“Of all your corkbrained, wagfeather ideas, Jack Sparrow . . .” his harried quartermaster began again heatedly.  
  
Jack held up a hand, halting Gibbs mid-diatribe, and focused again on the  _Dauntless_ , his attention caught by the way she was sailing. “Something’s up,” he said, raising his glass for a closer look. Certainly the pattern of activity aboard the Navy warship had altered. Hope stirred like the first faint gust of air after a dead calm. “Norrington is changing her heading! The  _Dauntless_  is bearing off!”  
  
“And that’ll just take her out of our range while leaving us in hers.”   
  
Gibbs’ usual pessimism could hardly be called unrealistic under the circumstances, but . . . “I don’t think so.” Jack shook his head, trying to come up with a logical reason for his conviction. “For some reason, he’s folding this hand.”  
  
“This isn’t a game, Jack,” Gibbs insisted desperately.  
  
“No,” Jack agreed soberly. “It isn’t.”   
  
Gibbs threw up his arms, his side-whiskers quivering in exasperation. “Then why are you gambling with our lives and this ship?”  
  
“Because,” Jack said softly, “there are far more ways for us to lose this day than there are for us to win. Norrington is a man of infinite patience and tenacity, with far greater resources than we possess. I prefer not to incur his everlasting hatred unless he gives me no other choice. Right now, I still seem to have other choices.”  
  
Captain Sparrow’s gaze swept to the slowly widening glitter of blue sea between the two ships. Gibbs was right about one thing. He was risking everything on his interpretation of Norrington’s motives. “Commodore,” he whispered to the wind. “What are you doing over there? What are you thinking?”  
  
* * * * *  
  
With the  _Dauntless_  firmly on her new heading, wind abeam, sails trimmed to best advantage in that less favourable position, Commodore Norrington could finally spare a sliver of his attention to marvel that they were still alive. Every moment of that excruciating change of course, he had expected the world to dissolve into smoke and flame and the deadly flights of shot and shrapnel. And yet the  _Black Pearl_  continued to sail wing and wing with the _Dauntless_  in eerie and silent majesty.   
  
The sun shone upon his shoulders, but the dark ship pacing them seemed to absorb all its warmth, drawing them into her shadow as though she had been created before light itself. Norrington shivered.  
  
What could Jack Sparrow, if it were he, be plotting? Why did he continue to hold his fire?  
  
Whatever the answers to those questions, one thing was certain—the  _Dauntless_  needed her portside cannon.  
  
His gun masters, dispatched to ascertain the status of the starboard guns, had reported only four of the 32-pounders on the lowest deck compromised. Apparently their small saboteur had been incarcerated before his task was complete. Forty-six cannon would still leave the  _Dauntless_  evenly matched with the  _Pearl_ , Norrington realized, if he could just redistribute them.   
  
Summoning his lieutenants, the commodore ordered the starboard watch to leave securing the ship and to take up rigging the tackle to transfer half of the functioning cannon portside. They would never succeed in time to defend against an immediate attack by the  _Black Pearl_ , but in the event his ship survived to sail out of range of the pirate’s guns, Norrington wanted her partially armed to ward off any further aggression.  
  
Lieutenant Groves received the orders with an abstracted air about him, but returning from delivering those instructions to the crew in his charge, he was transformed into the picture of decision. Taking the companionway steps at a gallop, Groves fetched up breathless in front of Norrington and Gillette.  
  
“Commodore, can we tell if Captain Sparrow is still in command of that ship?”  
  
When neither the commodore nor first lieutenant could give him that information, Groves bellowed at the foretop in the quarterdeck voice that still startled Norrington when it emerged from his soft-spoken second lieutenant, “Does anyone up there recognize Sparrow? Do you see him over there?”  
  
A moment later, the answer floated down, faint from such a height, “Aye sir, we think that’s him—with the glass on her rail.”  
  
“Then we have to close the gunports,” Groves said.  
  
“Have you lost your mind?” Gillette exclaimed.  
  
“Order them closed, Commodore!” Groves repeated urgently. “That is Jack Sparrow over there. If he knows we are not planning to use our guns, he will not fire on us.”  
  
“Or he might take it as an admission that we are helpless,” Gillette countered.  
  
“Even if he does, he does not want this ship. His crew is decimated, and we are six hundred strong, so he knows he cannot board us. If you give him the chance to break away instead of fight, you know he’ll take it,” Groves insisted.  
  
Feeling the ominous presence of the  _Black Pearl_  like a knife at his throat and knowing he had mere moments to make the decision, Norrington considered her unusual captain. No matter what impious stratagems that pirate’s fertile audacity turned against the powers of law and order in the Caribbean, Sparrow remained inexplicably reluctant to resort to killing. Even with such motive for revenge as the crew of the  _Pearl_  surely had, it was possible that following Groves’ advice would be the wisest action. And after all, Norrington acknowledged, with their impotent cannon, they were already incapable of defending the  _Dauntless_  against any vengeance the pirates chose to exact. If Sparrow elected to hold back his ship to engage his enemy, Norrington would have no choice but to order the  _Dauntless_ , unarmed, into the  _Pearl_ 's fire in an effort to board, spending the lives of his men like water to gain the advantage of the crippled pirate crew. But the  _Pearl_ 's gradually increasing speed made that an impossible option. As always, Sparrow’s only aim was the horizon. Nor, from the windward, could the  _Dauntless_  block the  _Black Pearl_ ’s headlong flight.   
  
To allow Jack Sparrow to escape. Again. The thought was as bitter as gall. And yet to hold to an aggressive course was to court disaster with no hope of victory.   
  
“Very well,” he said quietly, consciously banishing defeat from his voice and his stance. “Order her gunports closed.”  
  
* * * * *  
  
Returning from confirming that all newly-set sails were sheeted home, their tacks boarded and their leading edges drawn tight against the wind, Anamaria found the captain exactly where he had remained since the  _Dauntless_  had drawn within firing range, pinned to the rail as though he thought he could interpose his body between his ship and any weapon turned against her.   
  
Anamaria glowered at the back of his head. “Jack Sparrow, if you don’t let me shoot some Royal Navy arse, I’m goin’ to fetch you such a swat over your figure-head, you’ll think a Port Royal truck-horse kicked you with all four shoes on one hoof!”  
  
Jack glanced over his shoulder with a hint of that cursed grin of his. With insufficient forethought, Anamaria raised her arm to deliver on her promise. Unfortunately, that also dropped one of her crutches to the deck with a clatter.  
  
“Now, Ana, you don’t want to do Norrington’s work for him, do you?” Jack soothed, deftly removing himself from range.  
  
Anamaria balanced precariously on her remaining crutch. “Let me think about that. Yes. Yes, I do. The only way Norrington is goin’ to let us escape without exchangin’ half our hull for all of his lead is if the  _Dauntless_  is swallowed up by a kraken. With you out of the way, I can make sure that bloody commodore doesn’t get the chance to try.”   
  
But Jack Sparrow, that thrice-laid strand of a bloody fool, was already ignoring her again in favour of spying on the  _Dauntless_.   
  
Suddenly, the captain’s spine stiffened. Anamaria would not have thought it possible for his strained alertness to become any more rigid, but it had.  
  
“What is it?” she demanded as he brought the glass to his eye again. Her own tension wound even tighter about her throat, strangling her breath.   
  
Jack whirled back to her, the wind and motion whipping his dark hair across his face, and yet she could still see the despair that had darkened his eyes transformed to manic hope. “Look, Ana. The  _Dauntless_  is dropping her gunports! Norrington is standing down.”  
  
“I don’t believe it!” Anamaria hopped awkwardly to Jack, grabbed the glass from him, and trained it on their adversary. But Jack was telling the truth. Instead of the gaping, hungry mouths of cannon, she saw the impassive, unbroken hull of the  _Dauntless_  still bearing away from the  _Pearl_.  
  
Captain Sparrow was already bounding down the companionway in complete disregard of his ribs shouting, “Gentlemen, we have our miracle! Time to sway away on all top ropes! Let’s get those t’gallants set.”  
  
* * * * *  
  
Jack Sparrow swept along the decks of his  _Pearl_  as though a great sea of joy rushed over him. For the first time, he allowed himself to dare to dream their ordeal might be ending.   
  
Even as the topgallant sails on the mizzen and main masts rattled down into their gear in answer to his orders, Marty met him in the waist of the ship with the welcome tidings that the staysails were repaired and ready to run aloft.   
  
The age old commands to set staysails rang to the heights of her towering masts with the soul-wrenching ecstasy of a _Jubilate_ resounding in a cathedral.   
  
“On the main, on the mizzen, ease the topmast staysail downhaul; haul away on your halyard!”  
  
In answering harmony the fore-and-afters sang aloft with a jangle of hanks, unfolding like swan’s wings. As the sun lit the spreading canvas, Jack saw crimson stains intermingled with the black and white and realized how much he owed this gift of restored flight to his wounded crewmen.  
  
His next commands had to force their way past the tightness in his throat.   
  
Finally, impossibly, incredibly the topgallant sails were sheeted home and the last staysails were hoisted and trimmed. For an instant the  _Black Pearl_ seemed to pause, breathless, at the threshold.  
  
An awed hush fell over her crew.  
  
The song of the wind in her rigging was a note that had long vibrated in the intimacy of their hearts; it had passed into their blood, and it accompanied all their thoughts and deeds. But in that moment they knew it for a gift from heaven granted to the audacity of man, the mighty breath of the infinite caught in the frailest bonds, the very soul of the world condescending to be their formidable ally.   
  
As the  _Pearl_ ’s every sail drank in deep draughts of the silver-winged breeze, her wild chant deepened.  
  
Jack experienced the change in her music as though the sound originated in his bones and gradually grew until his entire being reverberated with a single, clear, pure tone like a struck bell. The cacophony of elements that had tangled in her fouled rigging and had beaten against her damaged hull in painful fury for so many days now resolved into the beloved familiar symphony that swept over his heart as his ship ran sweetly before the wind and waves until he thought she might dissolve into air and water and light, so swift she seemed.   
  
In that moment, he knew Norrington and his mighty  _Dauntless_  would never catch the  _Black Pearl_. Nothing made of oak and canvas could match her. For the first time since the naval vessel had drawn around that headland, Jack Sparrow stopped paying her any mind. The  _Dauntless_  ceased to exist for him.  
  
For her captain, there was only his  _Black Pearl_.  
  
Nothing could deface the loveliness of his ship. Not her motley, crazed sails. Not her cobbled together, patchwork hull. Not her spliced and knotted rigging. She remained steeped in eternal beauty. His beloved  _Pearl_.  
  
From the first moment he had laid eyes on her, she had stolen into his heart with gentle violence and brought him under her despotic sway. He loved her jealously, with an inextinguishable ardour and an insatiable desire—he loved her with a masterful devotion and an infinite trustfulness.   
  
She remained for him a creature of unfathomable mystery born from the conjunction of water and sky.  
  
Joining Cotton, Jack laid a reverent hand on the helm of his  _Black Pearl_.  
  
For the first time in the nightmare that was the last week, his ship had no restraint. There was only space: clear water around her, and clear sky above her mastheads. The spray flew off her bow as pellucid as crystal and refracting like a prism. The smooth swell ran on before her to the horizon in uninterrupted cadence gracefully undulating like sapphire silk shot with gleams of emerald.   
  
The sea looked young as the earth looks young in the spring.  
  
A somber exaltation shook his soul until the ache in his heart blurred his sight, and he was forced to grip his ship’s wheel to still the tremors in his hands.   
  
At last, his  _Black Pearl_  ran free.  
  
* * * * *  
  
Sparrow had not fired. Instead he was doing what that pernicious pirate did best—fleeing.  
  
Commodore Norrington watched with a sense of familiar futility as the last scraps of pied canvas ran aloft the  _Black Pearl_ ’s tall masts and spread out like a snare for catching the invisible power of the air. Under the sway of that reigning wind, Sparrow’s ship seemed scarcely to touch the blue seas over which she darted. Above the white fillet of foam tumbling under the slant of her mighty bowsprit, her figurehead stretched fair, rounded arms in her eternal, unwearied, striving-forward pose, cradling the small bird as if it were about to take flight from her hands.   
  
Certainly the  _Black Pearl_  was whisking Sparrow from the Royal Navy’s grasp most efficiently.  
  
“How does he do it?” Norrington muttered. “We left scarcely enough of that vessel to boil a pot of water with.”  
  
Unexpectedly, a voice spoke just behind him, “They say that certain ships, for the right man, will do anything but speak. I believe the  _Black Pearl_  is such a ship, and Jack Sparrow is such a man.”  
  
Theodore Groves. It could only be he. The commodore turned. “I do not comprehend how you can view the failure of our mission with such equanimity, Lieutenant,” he snapped, his forbearance having frayed beyond all endurance.  
  
“Perhaps because I am feeling humbled, which is a gift and a grace, whereas you are feeling merely humiliated.” Groves touched his hat, grinned unrepentantly, and resumed his course before his commanding officer’s glare could burn through his uniform into his insubordinate hide.  
  
Groves tossed his final salvo over his shoulder before he disappeared down the companionway. “As a certain wise man once said, we should ‘cherish such high deeds even in the bosom of our adversaries.’”  
  
* * * * *   
If her captain was caught up in the wonder of his  _Black Pearl_ , his crew was far less contemplative. In fact discipline took a flying leap off the taffrail.  
  
Shouts and cheers greeted the  _Pearl_ ’s run past the  _Dauntless_. Men hugged each other and laughed or wept.  
  
Asfar fell to the deck in grateful prayer with only a haphazard guess as to the direction of Mecca.   
  
Anamaria found herself crushed and breathless in Tearlach’s embrace before she was whirled into a limping dance with Gibbs.  
  
Marty flew by on a halyard celebrating having become a rich pirate indeed, having placed a bet on the very long shot that neither ship would fire.  
  
Pintel and Ragetti struck up a clumsy hornpipe.  
  
Joyous chaos reigned, triumphing over pain and grief and exhaustion.  
  
Requin came bounding up to Jack, all youthful ebullience. “Captain! Anamaria says she still wants to shoot at the  _Dauntless_. May we, sir?"  
  
“By all means,” Jack laughed, allowing himself to be distracted for the moment from his beloved ship. “Let us bite our thumbs at the Royal Navy.”  
  
* * * * *  
  
As the  _Black Pearl_ ’s insolent parting shots burst in jubilant sprays of froth well off the  _Dauntless_ ’s bow, Commodore Norrington gripped the mizzenmast shrouds until his palm burned, pinioned between relief and wretchedness. He was grateful, of course—boundlessly so—that his men and his ship remained unscathed. The horror of those moments when he had believed them to be lost still trembled in his bones. Yet to have come so close to capturing the elusive Jack Sparrow, and then to have all that labour made vain by the machinations of a child—the thought coiled inside him and struck like a viper. He did not know whether he was more furious that Jip had tried to destroy the  _Dauntless_  or that the boy had put him in the position of having to pass judgment on that deed.   
  
Leaving Lieutenant Gillette to direct the pointless pursuit of the  _Black Pearl_ , Commodore Norrington departed the quarterdeck in a frigid cloud of rage that cleared his path like a hurricane wind.  
  
However, the refuge of his cabin brought him no closer to peace. Unable to make himself sit down at first, Norrington orbited his desk several times. He picked up a sheet of blank paper, then set it down. He selected a quill but destroyed the nib attempting to trim it. Beginning again, with more success, he sat down at the desk, unstoppered the ink, dipped the quill, put it to the paper—and broke the nib at the first unsightly blotch. The paper was ruined. Norrington crumpled it up and threw it at the wall. It did not make a satisfying crash. Briefly, he considered the inkwell. Then he buried his face in his hands.  
  
What was he to do with Jip?   
  
The commodore took several deep breaths searching for calm. Such a decision should not be made in the heat of wrath.   
  
He must be a dispassionate judge. No personal feelings could be allowed to interfere. He would follow the recommended procedure, consult with his officers, take statements from his masters of carpentry, sail making, and gunnery. Everything would be done according to the law. Then he could be certain of making the right decision.  
  
He dispatched his steward to set up the appointments.  
  
* * * * *  
  
The  _Black Pearl_  was a toy ship upon a painted ocean by the time Commodore Norrington finished consulting his witnesses and drafting his judgment.   
  
The most torturous had been the unscheduled interview with Gilbert Samuels. The good doctor had argued like a Sophist, raged like an avenging Fury, laid Norrington’s soul open and bleeding with the scalpel of his righteous indignation, and reduced the commodore’s determination to follow where the law led him to the most trembling thread to which he had clung with white-knuckled hands. Finally, Samuels had departed, ominously silent, closing the door with a cold deliberation that left Norrington wondering whether he had lost a friend forever.  
  
It took him several minutes to quiet his breathing and unclench his hands from the edge of his desk where he was surprised to see no marks in the wood.   
  
As he was contemplating the document that had caused him so much trouble already, the door to his office opened and footsteps invaded the room.  
  
Commodore Norrington had no need to look up to see who had entered unbidden. Everyone else on his crew had the good sense to remain out of range. But Theodore Groves had never been a man to sacrifice his principles to his prudence.   
  
For one moment Norrington quivered between resentment at being forced to contend with his demons in the presence of an observer and gratitude for a friend with whom to share the burden.  
  
The relief at not being alone won. No matter how much his presence might harrow Norrington’s soul, there was also a boundless trust the commodore might repose in this honourable man, a faith that Norrington might safely construct the edifice of his judgment in reference to the unwavering plumb line of Groves’ integrity.  
  
That the two of them saw the world so differently could only be to Norrington’s advantage.  
  
Without looking up from where he stood smoothing the paper on which the stark black record of Jip’s crimes had long since been blotted and dried, Norrington addressed his quiet auditor, “You know what I must do.”   
  
It was not a question.  
  
The enormity of what the boy had done pressed on the room with chest-crushing weight. Slowly, the commodore turned to encounter the searching gaze of his second lieutenant.  
“It is to be the letter of the law then?” Lieutenant Groves asked sadly.  
  
“Can you show me any other viable alternative?” Norrington’s voice twisted with bitterness. “I devoutly wish you might.”  
  
Silence stretched. Norrington watched as hopelessness drew like a pall across his lieutenant’s face.   
  
Finally, Groves shook his head as though to deny his thoughts and words. “Death. You will have to order that child’s death.”  
  
The commodore controlled the sickness in his heart with iron manacles of will. Unable to meet Groves’ eyes any longer, he looked out across the darkling glassy shimmer of the sea.  
  
“My sail-maker demands that he be flogged to death. My carpenter wants him drawn and quartered. And my gunnery captains insist that I order him keel-hauled. The consensus among my officers is that he should, at the very least, be hanged—present company and the good doctor excepted,” he said, all emotion leached out of his tone.   
  
“None of those is an easy death,” Groves pointed out unnecessarily. “He is far too light for the gallows.”  
  
“Do not imagine I have not been picturing that scene in my nightmares!” Norrington snapped, pivoting to face Groves again.   
  
“What have you decided, then?” the lieutenant inquired carefully.  
  
The commodore lifted his hands helplessly. “What can I do? I cannot wink at what he has done to the  _Dauntless_!” He moved to the table and, unseeing, shuffled through the papers loosely scattered there. “I have done what I could for him. He will have an honourable death as would a man of rank.”  
  
“A single, well-placed shot, then.” Groves spoke tightly through some suppressed emotion. “I suppose that is the best we can do, but I wish there were some less fatal penalty for such a crime.”  
  
“Gilbert Samuels waxes eloquent on the waste of his talents.” Norrington grimaced. “To what purpose does he deliver a patient from the gates of death only to have me snatch the wretch away and kick him back through?”  
  
“The doctor has become rather attached to the lad,” Groves observed. “He is dreadfully cut up about the whole matter—blames himself for allowing the little imp to escape so often.”  
  
“Oh, there is an entire shipload of blame to spread around,” Norrington agreed. “That one miniature pirate succeeded in thwarting us as thoroughly as he did speaks as much of our own laxity and ineptness as it does of his craft and guile.” He paused, tracing the grain of the wood with a single, slender finger. “Nevertheless, my responsibility is clear. An act of sabotage threatening the very life of this ship has been committed by an enemy of the Crown. Both elements of the crime are present—the  _actus reus_  and the  _mens rea_. He fully intended the harm he achieved. The law demands that enemy forfeit his own life. And tomorrow, at dawn, I shall see that the law is fulfilled—as quickly and cleanly as possible.”  
  
“Has he been told?” Groves asked.  
  
“I shall tell him myself,” Norrington said.   
  
* * * * *   
  
The rumble of gun carriages still being transported on the deck above masked the noise of Norrington’s approach, allowing the commodore to observe his captive for a moment before the boy knew he was there. Alone in the dark, echoing hold, Jip huddled against the hull of the ship as though he had been trying to hear what was transpiring out in the world. His tense face was tilted back, eyes closed, and his arms were wrapped tightly around his good leg, his knuckles showing pale even through the grime. With his dirt-encrusted golden curls, he looked like nothing so much as a very young angel, fallen from grace and sick of sin.   
  
The impression was fleeting. A particularly creaky board in the step down into the hold alerted the boy to Norrington’s arrival. Jip scrambled upright in an eager tangle of limbs and crutches in order to meet his captor at the bars of his cell, seeming unaware or unconcerned that his actions might have merited him any retribution.   
  
Free of either awe or respect for authority or age, Jip did not wait for the commodore to address him. Pent-up questions overflowed too swiftly for answers: “Did the  _Black Pearl_  escape? She did, didn’t she? Is Captain Sparrow still alive? Will you tell me? Do you know?”  
  
It would be an unconscionable act of cruelty to withhold such information. Norrington gritted his teeth and admitted, “Jack Sparrow was still at the helm of the  _Black Pearl_  when last we saw her.”   
  
Jip scampered about in a joyous clatter of crutches. “Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!” he cried.  
  
“I am afraid it had nothing to do with me,” the commodore said repressively. “In fact, I did my best to prevent its happening.”  
  
“Not you!” Jip laughed with delight. “I was praying so hard!”  
  
That statement set Norrington aback. “Where did you learn to pray?”  
  
“Captain Sparrow says there really are gods who interfere amazingly. He says he once got curst by some! Turned him into a right immortal skellington! You could see all his bones!” Jip recounted with ghoulish relish. “So he says it can’t hurt to pray.”   
  
Norrington reflected that at one time he would have instantly dismissed such a story. Now he shuddered, wondering how much of it was true.  
  
“To which ones do you pray?” he inquired, not sure if it would be up to him to convert a small heathen before sending him to his eternal reward.  
  
“Oh, the Christian one, of course. Captain Sparrow says it’s always best to pray to your own gods first. They’re more likely to care what happens to you.”   
  
Well he was thankful for small mercies, Norrington decided. However unorthodox Jip’s upbringing and spiritual education, the boy was at least not a complete savage.  
  
“And which does your captain pray to?” the commodore asked curiously. Would this give him any clue to Sparrow’s past?  
  
“All of ‘em,” Jip answered blithely. “He says he doesn’t know which ones’d be crazy enough to claim him so why take the chance?”   
  
So much for clues. At least that explained Sparrow’s strategies and tactics. He was getting assistance from every major deity.   
  
As if realizing that the commodore had come for some purpose other than setting his captive’s mind at ease about the fate of Jack Sparrow, Jip halted his clumsy capering and looked up at Norrington inquiringly.  
  
For a moment Norrington regretted not delivering his message in the full heat of his original wrath when Jip’s triumph would merely have provided unalloyed annoyance instead of an urge to put off the moment when he must crush that joy. However, personal feelings were irrelevant. He had his duty.   
  
Taking a deep breath to draw up the steel in his soul, the commodore asked the boy, “Do you realize what it is you have done?”   
  
“You said you could not stop shooting at my ship,” Jip said. “I stopped you.”  
  
The boy’s complete lack of repentance rekindled some of Norrington’s ire. “Yes, you damaged the entire portside battery. I had committed this ship irrevocably to battle before I knew the  _Dauntless_  was, to all intents and purposes, unarmed. There are over six hundred lives aboard this ship, and you put them all at risk.”  
  
“But there wasn’t any risk,” Jip maintained stubbornly. “I knew if you did not fire, Captain Sparrow would not. However, if you had fired, he would have returned it. Then your six hundred men would have been in danger. So,” he finished, “I saved the lives of the men who would have died if you had fired. And I saved my ship.”  
  
“But what if the ship we had engaged was not in the hands of an honourable man like your captain?” Norrington asked. “What if he had no longer been in command of the  _Black Pearl_? What if we had gone up against another pirate? Or a French privateer? Did you consider that in your calculations?”  
  
“Oh,” Jip said, appropriately subdued.   
  
Norrington gave him a moment to contemplate the enormity of his deeds then continued, “And now we must wonder what other coils of snakes you have left into which we shall plung our unwitting hands.”   
  
“Nothing more,” Jip said.   
  
Those wide blue eyes looked so sincere, but Norrington was unwilling to be deceived again. “Nothing more?” he asked. “I do not know whether to believe you or not. I would ask for your word, but you have already proved yourself capable of breaking that.”  
  
“The  _Black Pearl_  escaped. That is what I wanted. I have no reason now to lie to you.”   
  
The defiant tilt of Jip’s chin was somewhat belied by the faint flush on his cheeks. At least the boy had some sense of shame, Norrington reflected. That knowledge gentled his tone as he asked, “Do you know what the penalty is for what you have done?”  
  
“You said you wouldn’t hang a boy like me.”  
  
“Only if he were not guilty of piracy. You have rapidly become guilty.”  
  
Jip’s face paled, and his voice was small when he asked, “So you are going to hang me?”   
  
It was one thing to pass sentence in crisp black ink on impersonal parchment, Norrington discovered. It was another to deliver that judgment to the upturned face and stricken eyes of a child. His heart twisted and flinched away from completing the task he had set himself. And yet Jip deserved honesty. To attempt to soften the hard truth would be cowardly and unfair, unworthy treatment of so valiant a foe.  
  
“The penalty is death,” Norrington admitted. “But not by hanging. Tomorrow at dawn you will be shot.”  
  
To Norrington’s bewilderment, relief lit the little pirate’s countenance.   
  
“That’s all right, then,” Jip said, nodding his approval. Apparently, as long as it involved neither the noose nor the lash, Jip was entirely phlegmatic about his fate.  
  
The commodore, however, found himself unable to share his captive’s insouciance.  
  
In all his glittering boyhood dreams of serving in the Royal Navy, James Norrington had envisioned many ways in which he might give his life for his king and his country. But he had never imagined in any gory nightmare of carnage on the high seas that his duty might lead him to deliberately take the life of a child. A bleak sense of desolation settled over him.  
  
Since Norrington had accomplished his self-appointed task, nothing remained but to exchange polite farewells with Jip. And yet the commodore felt an unaccountable urge to linger in the amorphous darkness of the hold, as though his return to the weatherdecks of the  _Dauntless_  would make his course irrevocable. However, there was no logic in following that impulse.   
  
Leaving Jip with his rejoicing over the  _Black Pearl_ ’s escape only slightly muted, Norrington wondered if any of his own young crew members would sacrifice so much with so little concern as this pirate child had for his ship and his mates.  
  
Returning to the quarterdeck, Commodore Norrington remained apart from any of his officers, watching alone with his uncomfortable thoughts until daylight struck its final colours, and the  _Black Pearl_ , flying before them like the fantastic shadow of a cloud cast darkly upon the sea, fell headlong over the hard edge of the implacable horizon.  
  
* * * * *  
  
Coming off his watch and heading for his quarters, Lieutenant Groves nearly jumped out of the stripes on his sleeves when a shadowy figure lurched out of the gloom and grabbed him by the neckcloth.  
  
His astonishment was in no way diminished by his recognition of the doctor. Gilbert Samuels, always rational and calm in scenes of the worst chaos, had been transformed into a madman, his eyes demented, his grey hair heading recklessly to all points of the compass.  
  
Groves attempted to retreat from his captor, but Samuels refused to relinquish his prize.  
  
“Theodore Groves,” the doctor said in the tone of a man whose patience has clearly blown out its bolt ropes, “you are the only other sane man aboard this ship. Come into my surgery. We need to talk.”  
  
Choosing rather to be led than strangled, Groves followed close on Samuels’ heels as the heedless doctor continued his rant. “Bloody Royal Navy! Murdering children now, are we?” he fumed. “God himself with his bow in the clouds couldn’t convince ‘em there are any colours other than black and white.”  
  
The makeshift noose about his neck prevented Groves even from nodding his agreement.  
  
“I’ll tell you what,” the doctor continued, banging open the door of the surgery. “I, for one, am not going to stand for it.”   
  
At this point, Groves balked. “Are you asking me to participate in mutiny, Dr. Samuels?” he managed to choke out.  
  
“Lord, no!” Samuels looked startled. Then he shrugged. “Well, only a small one.”  
  
He suddenly seemed to realize that the lieutenant was turning a bit purple around the edges from lack of air. Releasing his grip on Groves’ neckcloth, Samuels endeavored to straighten the hopelessly mangled fabric. Abandoning the attempt, he apologetically patted Groves’ coat back into place. Gesturing at the doorway, he said much more calmly, “Please. Of your courtesy. Just hear what I have to say. I promise that what I am asking of you will in no way impinge on your honour.”  
  
Slightly reassured, Groves allowed himself to be ushered into the surgery.  
  
“It is not just Jip that I am determined to save, you know,” Samuels continued, closing the door. “A part of James Norrington will not walk away from that execution alive. And it is as much my duty to see that the commodore, in pursuit of his duty, does not completely annihilate young James as it is to see that his physical health is preserved.”  
  
“Commodore Norrington believes he is doing what is right and necessary,” Groves warned. “And you know he will not be swayed from that action even for the sake of his own ease.”  
  
“I am well aware of the length and the breadth and the depth of insertion of the legal stick up that young man’s . . . ahem.” Samuels appeared to think better of his heading. Visibly reducing the heat on his roiling boil, he amended, “I am aware that the commodore will not be turned aside from what he perceives as his moral obligation.”   
  
“Immoral obligation might be the better term,” Groves observed, finding it more of a relief than he had expected to be able to speak freely.  
  
Samuels raised an eyebrow at him. “Precisely. I knew I had chosen the right man.” The doctor selected an open volume from the table at his side and ran his finger down the page until he reached the passage for which he was searching. “You too understand that there is a law ‘coeval with mankind, dictated by God himself, superior in obligation to any other, and no human laws are of any validity if contrary to this.’”  
  
The table in the surgery was not covered with medical manuals, as Groves had at first assumed, but with legal tomes. As well as the copy in his hand of Sir William Blackstone’s newly published  _An Analysis of the Laws of England_ , Dr. Samuels had amassed a formidable arsenal containing, among other volumes, Lord Bacon’s  _Elements_ , the  _Institutes_  of Sir Edward Coke, Dr. Cowel’s  _Institutiones_ , Sir Henry Finch’s  _Discourse of Law_ , and Matthew Hale’s  _Analysis of the Law_.  
  
Samuels indicated a chair, and the lieutenant sat down bemused.   
  
Thumping a dusty copy of the  _Articles of War_  in front of Groves, the doctor said tersely, “If the commodore cannot act outside the law, then we are going to have to find another law—or a loophole.”  
  
* * * * *  
  
TBC


	31. Who Holds His Honour Higher Than His Ease

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Norrington has a decision to make. In the process memories of the past are dredged up. I owe those memories to Alex Beecroft and her wonderful story “Mutiny on the Dauntless.” The story no longer exists on the internet, so I have only my admittedly foggy recollection to go on; however, that back story has always remained part of my personal PotC canon. Many thanks to Alex for her permission to reference her work.
> 
> Today’s title is from Troilus and Cressida by William Shakespeare.

The sea was swathed in rich twilight when Commodore Norrington returned to his cabin. The lanterns were lit, giving a warm glow to the room, but he took no comfort in them. Choosing a volume from his library, Norrington settled at his desk and tried to immerse himself in a book, attempting to evade the raging pursuit of his own thoughts.  
  
By the fourth bell of the first dog watch, he realized that he had no recollection of what he had been reading.   
  
The soft knock on his door was a welcome interruption.  
  
Upon his invitation, Theodore Groves entered and approached the commodore’s desk.   
  
“What is it, Lieutenant?” Norrington asked. “Should you not be off duty now?”  
  
Groves did not answer his question, nor did he seat himself when Norrington offered him the other chair. There was an unaccustomed heaviness about his normally buoyant lieutenant.  
  
Norrington braced himself as though expecting a blow, determined not to shy away from what promised to be a painful conversation.  
  
“Did you inform Jip of the penalty for his actions?” Groves asked.  
  
“I did,” Norrington responded, his stomach twisting at the memory.  
  
“How did he take it?”  
  
“He argues that he actually preserved the lives of the _Dauntless_ ’ crew by preventing that battle,” Norrington said. “As for the sentence, he seems unconcerned. I left him praising the Almighty for delivering Jack Sparrow from the fell intentions of the Royal Navy.”  
  
For once he had surprised Groves.  
  
“That . . . is rather unexpected.” The lieutenant raised an eyebrow.  
  
“Yes, apparently Sparrow did not entirely neglect the child’s spiritual education, however unusual it might have been. He will be prepared to receive what comfort our chaplain can give before . . .” Norrington found his voice betraying him. “I do not think he comprehends. . . . Oh God, Theodore. How can I do this?”  
  
“Must you do this?” Groves asked, sympathetic but also gently pressing. “Can you chart no other course?”  
  
Norrington took a firm grip on his composure. “We have already been over this, Lieutenant. Jip is not an infant, under the age of seven, to be pardoned because he is considered incapable of understanding his actions. Granted, he is not over the age of fourteen, to be without question considered an adult. And yet the law is clear. _Malitia supplet aetatem_. Malice supplies the age. Of his intent to sabotage the _Dauntless_ , there can be no doubt.”  
  
For a moment Groves’ dark, troubled eyes met Norrington’s. Then the lieutenant squared his shoulders as though adjusting his course to a new wind. “Might I offer a possible alternative to execution, one that will not only insure that Jip’s crimes are punished, but also, and more importantly, that he does not commit their like again?” he asked.  
  
“I should receive such an alternative with immense gratitude,” Norrington said in all sincerity.  
  
Groves walked over to the window and gazed thoughtfully into the gathering darkness. “Have you noticed,” he said, “that while Jip’s actions have been entirely hostile towards the Royal Navy, he is nevertheless not a selfish child? Every crime he has committed has been against his own best interests, even actively opposed to his comfort. He could very easily have allowed the good doctor to care for him like the returned prodigal. Yet what does he do? Only the very worst thing he can for his own self-preservation—put his life and his health at risk to stop this ship, even though anything he does to us he does equally to himself. If we sink, he sinks. If we are blasted to pieces while our spiked guns cannot fire, he shares that peril.” He turned back to face the commodore. “And what motivates this vast destructiveness? His only concern is to assist the people he cares about. In my opinion, his behaviour does not entirely fit the actual, as opposed to the legal, definition of _malitia_ , and therefore the punishment can with reason be mitigated.”  
  
Norrington frowned. “I am not entirely certain I agree with your logic; however, pray continue.”  
  
Groves again approached the desk where Norrington remained seated. “I concede, according to the law, Jip has committed a felony with full knowledge of what he was doing, and as such he merits judgment as an adult,” he admitted. “However, I propose that instead of the sentence of death by firing squad, you offer him the commuted sentence of a flogging with the cat o’ nine, the 36 lashes a prudent yet moderate captain might order a man for a serious crime.”  
  
“He will be just as dead after such a punishment as he would have been from the shot but with vastly more suffering!” Norrington exclaimed. “And if you are implying he might survive such torture, I am sure it would do nothing towards preventing him from sabotaging us again.”  
  
“A child would _not_ survive it,” Groves answered, a terrible stillness in his voice. “But a man would.”  
  
“What are you suggesting, Lieutenant?” Norrington asked sharply.  
  
“Change the order, Commodore,” Groves replied, bracing his hands on the desk and leaning forward in earnestness. “And I will take that flogging in Jip’s stead. I suspect that if he knows his actions will directly harm someone of whom perhaps he is a little fond, he will conduct himself with more restraint in the future.”  
  
James Norrington sat in stunned and breathless silence. Lieutenant Theodore Groves stood waiting, resolute, offering the most appalling sacrifice—for the small soul whom the Fates had thrown in their midst so damaged, so indomitable, so alone; but also for his commanding officer, in order that Norrington might not wound his own soul so very deep in the service of the law and of his oaths.   
  
“Do you understand what you are saying?” he asked incredulously. The commodore knew his second lieutenant had never felt the lash of the cat o’ nine in his life. When, during a Caribbean downpour, the crew battened the washports until the water on deck rose past their ankles and sported like young sea lions, revelling in the chance to be clean, it was obvious who had been flogged and who had not. In fact, for an officer of a warship that regularly saw action, Theodore Groves was extraordinarily unmarked by battle scars let alone those fierce scars left by the nine knotted tails of the cat, as though his flesh, in image of his heart, could not be touched by the contagion of the world’s slow stain.   
  
“I have seen men flogged,” Groves said, shrugging. “It would not be my first choice of a way to spend a morning, but I am confident that I am as capable as any other man of enduring it.”  
  
Of that, Norrington was certain as well. There was a fine courage in his second lieutenant that never flaunted itself, yet never shrank from any dangerous or disagreeable task. And yet a flogging changed a man, as he had cause to know from personal experience—both the physical trauma of it and the mental anguish and shame. He wondered whether the man who would emerge from such a punishment would be the same merry, eternally optimistic Theodore for whom all winds were fair and all seas following, or whether that man would die under the lash as surely as Jip would have and a stranger take his place.  
  
Norrington shook his head, denying his imaginings: Theodore, bound to the grating like an incorrigible common tar; himself, having to give the order to the boatswain, “Do your duty, or take his place.” The thought made him heartsick. “No, I cannot ask you to do such a thing.”  
  
“James, you have not asked,” Groves said earnestly. “I am asking you. Please. Give me leave to do this. We have taken more from Jip than he has ever taken from us. He has suffered far more at our hands than we have at his. Allow it to be sufficient. The laws of England and of the Royal Navy are not the only laws by which we are bound, my friend. There is a law that transcends them all. Do not lay this great sin to our charge.”  
  
The two men faced each other, Groves entreating, Norrington torn as a man who must decide upon which sword to fall.   
  
“Please, James,” Groves repeated. “I beg you.”  
  
Norrington raised his hands in surrender. “How can I refuse such a request?”  
  
“I very much pray you cannot.”   
  
“Very well,” Norrington agreed, “I will change the order, and you may take Jip’s punishment. You may, if you wish, tell him of his reprieve.”  
  
Groves’ smile lit the gloom of the cabin. “Thank you, sir.”  
  
Norrington shook his head. What kind of a man so welcomed the knowledge that he was to be flogged? But Theodore Groves had always been an anomaly in a world where if a man did not arrive with a heart hardened and calloused over, he soon became so if he meant to survive.  
  
As Groves turned to go, Norrington called after him, “Lieutenant, however did a man like you come to be a warrior and not a priest?”  
  
Groves looked back with a wry quirk to his mouth. “Because if I had followed the cloth instead of the drum, there would be no one here to stay your hand and direct your attention to a more suitable ram.”  
  
Norrington considered the allusion. “That would make you either the angel or the sheep.”  
  
Laughing, Groves made horns of his index fingers and waggled them beside his head. “Baaaa!” he said and then let himself out the door.  
  
* * * * *  
  
Lieutenant Groves returned more swiftly than Commodore Norrington had expected. Dropping into a chair without waiting for an invitation, Groves sat there looking perplexed.  
  
“Well?” Norrington prompted. “How did Jip receive your news?”   
  
“One thing is assured,” Groves said with conviction. “He will cause us no more grief after this.”   
  
“You are certain?”  
  
“He cried, James.” The lieutenant’s voice was rough with emotion as he spoke. “He threw his arms around me, and he wept. And then he refused.”  
  
“He what?” Norrington asked incredulously.   
  
“He refused to let me do it.” Groves raised his hands in bewilderment. “I told him that it was my choice, not his. That you and I had agreed that this was the only way we could satisfy the requirements of the law without taking his life.” He shook his head. “He still refused. Now he wants to talk to you.”   
  
* * * * *  
  
Commodore Norrington was not accustomed to being summoned to the brig by his prisoners. In fact the only other miscreant who had been so bold had been Sparrow himself, so perhaps it was to be expected in this miniature version.  
  
He found Jip hovering at the bars of his cell in agitation. As soon as the boy caught sight of the commodore, he called out, “You can’t flog Mr. Groves, sir!”  
  
Norrington finished his descent into the hold before responding. “The lieutenant insists the same thing about you, Jip. Are you saying you would rather face the penalty yourself?”  
  
“Yes,” Jip said emphatically, “if you’d please just shoot me instead.”  
  
“You cannot possibly mean that,” Norrington responded.  
  
“Then I’d see some of my friends again, the ones who died.” Jip’s voice was wistful. “We agreed, the _Pearl_ ’s crew, whoever died first in that fight would just wait around the shore of Fiddler’s Green until the rest of us showed up.”  
  
Jip sniffed and wiped his nose on his grimy sleeve.  
  
Norrington felt his heart wrench. That this child should simply want to go home again in the only way he thought he could . . .  
  
Seating himself on a convenient crate so that he could look the boy in the eyes, he asked, “Why will you not let Lieutenant Groves shield you from such a fate?”  
  
Jip eyed Norrington as though puzzled he would ask such a question. “He told me he’s never been flogged with the cat o’ nine.”   
  
“That is correct.” Norrington nodded.  
  
“Then he doesn’t know,” Jip said.  
  
“He does not,” Norrington acknowledged, “but he is a good and brave man, and I believe he would do this even if he did know.”  
  
For a moment in the dim light of the _Dauntless_ ’ hold, the commodore and the small pirate regarded each other consideringly.   
  
Norrington had the uneasy impression those wide, unchildlike eyes were seeing far more than he wanted revealed.  
  
Nevertheless, he was startled when Jip said, “But you know.”   
  
“I do,” Norrington admitted, remembering the scars he had seen on Jip’s back, like the much older scars on his own. Evidently the boy had sensed that kinship, somehow.  
  
“Why were you flogged?” Jip asked.  
  
James Norrington considered that long ago young man he had been. He had never told this story to anyone before. “It happened many years ago,” he said, “before you were born, when I was first lieutenant on this ship, the _Dauntless_.”   
  
“Like Mr. Groves is now?”  
  
“No, like Lieutenant Gillette. Lieutenant Groves is second lieutenant.”  
  
But oh, he had been like young Theodore then. Not as blithe and carefree, perhaps, but having that belief in the essential goodness of the universe, the conviction that a righteous man could make a difference all on his own. And with a conscience as clear.  
  
“Her captain at the time was . . . ,” he paused to choose his words carefully, “a severe man, a man who believed in maintaining discipline with the liberal application of the lash. The _Dauntless_ was an efficient ship, but she was not a happy ship. The crew, for the most part, was obedient but resentful. However, when one of the men was caught sleeping on watch, the captain sentenced him to death.”  
  
“By shooting?” Jip asked.  
  
“No, he was hung in a basket off the bowsprit and given a flagon of ale, a bit of bread, and a sharp knife. His death would be his choice—starvation or drowning. The man was a good sailor, well-liked by his peers, and there were extenuating circumstances.”  
  
“What’s ‘extenuating’?” Jip interrupted.  
  
“He had a good excuse for falling asleep.” Norrington answered, pausing his story.  
  
“Then what happened?” his curious auditor urged.  
  
Bracing himself, Norrington continued. “The crew, watching him dying out there, became more and more angry. I approached the captain and tried to reason with him. He was not a reasonable man. He accused me of insubordination and sentenced me to be flogged.”  
  
Norrington paused remembering that moment from which all the tides of his life ran. So much had become clear; so much had become clouded. He had always accepted that the cat was a necessary part of discipline on a ship, but he had not known the extent to which the punishment was only partly about the suffering and so very much about the humiliation, and he had not expected the intensity of his resentment.  
  
Even this briefest of long ago memories had the power to leave him shaken, his hands clenched into fists.  
  
With a long, deep breath, he focused again on the present. Through the bars, Jip observed him with eyes that in a boy his age should have been as clear and uncomprehending of this story as Theodore’s. But no. This child understood his silence. Life had already coloured Jip’s world in bitter shades.  
  
And now James Norrington found himself commander of the same _Dauntless_ where once again a young lieutenant was objecting to his commodore’s—admit it—to his commodore’s brutality. Oh, none of Norrington’s crew was going to mutiny over the disposition of a captive pirate. Nor would Norrington have countenanced the kind of cruelty his former captain had relished. And Theodore had offered to take that flogging as freely as a gift. But the parallels remained blindingly obvious here in the darkness.   
  
“What happened to the man in the basket?” Jip asked.  
  
“He was shot by the captain. It was a mercy.”   
  
And what a world was it, where to shoot a human being counted as mercy? Was it the world he had joined the service to help protect, to help create? Norrington found himself grateful for Jip’s interrupting questions. It was—ironic—that the memory of past horrors, blunted as they were by time, was a refuge from the present.   
  
“What happened to the captain?” Jip persisted.  
  
“The crew very nearly did mutiny,” Norrington answered. “However, the mutiny was interrupted by a battle during which someone ran the captain through with a sword, leaving him unfit to command and giving me charge of the ship. In the absence of a focus for their hatred, and perhaps because that flogging had made me temporarily one of them, the men stood down.”  
  
“What happened to you?”  
  
That—was a very good question. What had happened to Lieutenant Norrington? In the darkness of the _Dauntless_ ’ hold, the commodore could see so plainly the path that stretched back to the young man he had been, could see the way that experience had influenced the course he had chosen. And he could see faintly the branching that lay ahead of him. What choice would he make before the morrow? Would he repeat the past and allow Theodore Groves to be flogged? Or would he repeat the past and consent to the execution of this child?   
  
He could hear Theodore’s question still: “Can you chart no other course?”  
  
Any other course would have to be navigated without the compass by which he had always steered his life. He would have to sail beyond the safe confines of the law into a gray sea of moral ambiguity.  
  
He did not know the answer to Theodore’s question.   
  
As for Jip’s question what had happened to James Norrington?  
  
“I do not know,” he answered, feeling suddenly old and exhausted.  
  
“But you do know it would be much, much better to shoot me than to flog Mr. Groves!” Jip insisted.  
  
Norrington shook his head sadly. “Perhaps I do not want your blood on my hands.”  
  
“And p’raps I don’t want his on mine,” Jip retorted obstinately, as dauntless as the vessel on which he was imprisoned.  
  
“We seem to have reached an impasse.” Norrington got slowly to his feet. “I give you my word I will consider what you have said.”  
  
Making his way out of the hold, Norrington stopped, an idea having struck. Turning back to Jip he asked, “Suppose someone did to the _Black Pearl_ what you have done to the _Dauntless_ —compromised her hull, destroyed her spare sails, and sent her into battle without her guns. Do you know what Captain Jack Sparrow would do to such a one?”  
  
“Oh,” said Jip, “Of course. He’d maroon anyone who did that.”  
  
“Maroon.” Norrington turned the word over thoughtfully.  
  
“Yes, leave him on an island with water, a pistol, powder and shot.”  
  
“I was aware of that definition,” Norrington said. “I imagine how serious a penalty that is depends on the island.”  
  
“Yes,” said Jip. “If it’s just a spit of sand you either die of thirst or shoot yourself, but Captain Sparrow wouldn’t do that. He had it done to him, you see. And he didn’t much like it, he says. So he would make sure it was an island where a person could survive.”  
  
“That is very interesting,” Norrington said. “Goodnight, Jip.”  
  
“Goodnight, Commodore Norrington,” Jip responded just as if he were a perfectly polite, civilized child. “And will you tell Lieutenant Groves thank you, but I will take my own punishment.”  
  
“I will tell him you said so, but the decision is not yours to make.”  
  
* * * * *  
  
That night the rumour around the scuttlebutt ran rudderless in a gale wind. Around the officer’s mess, from which both the Commodore and the Second Lieutenant chose to absent themselves, at least some of the truth was known, but the fact that one of their own had volunteered to face a flogging to save the life of a pirate added as much terrible relish to the conversation as the most lurid fabrications of the crew.   
  
First Lieutenant Gillette did not participate in the debate except to quash a particularly impertinent midshipman or two with a withering glare that rendered them mute for the remainder of the meal. Nor did he seem much interested in the admittedly sub-standard fare that represented the best efforts of the cook with what remained in stores after so many months at sea. Finally, with an abstracted air, he snagged a bottle of wine, tucked it under his arm, ignored the anguished and indignant glances of those for whom the spirits had been intended, slung two tin mugs on one finger, nodded once to the stunned-silent company, and left the room. Such was the first lieutenant’s reputation that, even when he was no longer present, not one voice dared raise an audible objection.  
  
* * * * *  
  
Emerging from his quarters, having added a pack of cards to his arsenal, Lieutenant Gillette tapped at the door of one of the officers’ cabins, calling out, “Theo? Are you in there?”  
  
Receiving an affirmative, he manoeuvred open the door, taking care not to drop any of his burdens. Ducking into the cramped space, Gillette pulled the door closed behind him with equal caution.   
  
In the wavery light of the single lantern, he saw Theodore Groves seated on the painfully neat grey wool blanket of his cot that hung suspended on ropes from the deck above. The only other occupant of the room was a moderate sea chest that took up almost all the available deck. Groves had divested himself of his uniform coat, his shoes, and his wig, but he did not appear relaxed. His normally neat, dark hair looked as though he had absently run his hands through it and set it all acockbill, making him seem younger and smaller somehow. The volume he was holding, something of Locke’s, Gillette observed, was unopened.   
  
“Hello, Andrew,” Groves greeted him with a welcoming smile.   
  
However, Gillette noted the lines of strain about his friend’s mouth. Really, this was a damnable business, no matter how you looked at it. “Care for a rubber of piquet?” he asked casually, waving the pack of cards, as though this were any other night on which he might be searching for entertainment.  
  
“Gambling? Are you not concerned that we shall be reported?” Groves asked with a wry smile.  
  
Gillette grinned unrepentantly and gestured with the pack of cards to the stripes on his uniform sleeve. “Who would dare?”   
  
“Are you sure you can afford it?” Groves raised an eyebrow, playing along. He edged over on his mattress to give his friend room to enter further.  
  
“I may not be a rich man,” said Gillette seating himself on the sea chest across from Groves with only a minimal tussle about whose knees went where. “But I can afford to engage you!”  
  
“Pure hubris.” Groves shook his head, reaching out for the cards with a lean, brown hand.  
  
Freed of that encumbrance, Gillette was able to produce the bottle.   
  
“Andrew, you’re a saint,” Groves said fervently.  
  
Gillette laughed. “Only m’ mother would agree with you.”   
  
Balancing the bottle and the mugs on the chest, he rid himself of his own coat, digging a corkscrew out of one pocket as he did so. “Might as well be comfortable,” he said. Seizing the bottle again, he popped the cork with a flourish.  
  
When the mugs were suitably full and distributed, the two officers raised them in the traditional salute to the king. Then Gillette sipped his wine appreciatively while Groves threw back a gulp with the air of a man who sought merely to achieve numbness as swiftly as possible.  
  
“Now,” Groves said, wiping his mouth on his sleeve, “shall we play?”  
  
They argued amicably for several minutes about the stakes. Recklessly, Groves agreed to five shilling points with an extra five pounds a rubber. When Gillette raised an eyebrow at him, he challenged, “If that is too steep for you . . . ?”  
  
Gillette assured his friend that he was well able to stand the bluff, and would Theo just take in the slack of his jaw and shuffle the damned cards.   
  
Groves did so, and Gillette cut the deck.   
  
From the first rubber, it was obvious that Groves’ heart was not in the game. While by past experience Gillette knew the two of them to be evenly matched, tonight he was consistently in possession of the winning cards. Groves seemed unable to calculate any odds whatsoever about his opponent’s hand, and he was making some very odd discards. Occasionally, he would even get his points wrong.   
  
In the second rubber, Gillette had his thirty points long before they began the tricks.  
  
“Piqued, repiqued and capotted!” Groves declared dolefully. “You are going to holystone the deck with me.”  
  
His words proved to be prophetic. Soon Gillette had a tidy collection of Groves’ vowels stacked on the chest beside him. As the wine diminished in the bottle, so the play slowed and the men grew silent.  
  
Finally, Gillette looked up at his friend, acknowledging what had stood in the room with them from the beginning, taking up most of the space and all of the air. “It’s a hell of a thing you’re doing, Theo,” he said quietly.  
  
Groves controlled the faintest of shivers almost before Gillette noticed. “It is the lesser of the evils,” he replied, shuffling and reshuffling the cards meticulously. “I did not sign on to serve in the Royal Navy in order to execute misbehaving children.”  
  
And being the man he was, Gillette thought, Groves counted no cost in finding a solution to the problem.  
  
“Well, I still think you’re a candidate for Bedlam,” Gillette said fondly, liberating the cards from his friend before the ink was shuffled off them. “But you’re a good man, Theodore Groves. Better than the rest of us.”   
  
Groves shrugged dismissively. “Not at piquet,” he said with a small smile, gesturing at the substantial accumulation of vowels. “My luck is out, I see.”  
  
Allowing Groves to turn the topic back to the game, Gillette cut the deck. “I think it’s your attention that’s out. But that’s all to my advantage. You owe me twice your year’s pay.”  
  
“Twice nothing is still nothing,” Groves retorted.  
  
“Fortunately for you,” Gillette said, dealing the sets of twelve cards insouciantly. “I have a philosophical objection to fleecing a man whose wits are wandering, so your nothing is safe from me.”  
  
Groves tried to object to this, but Gillette won the tug of war over the vowels. The cards spilled on the deck. The wine nearly spilled there, but Groves managed a lightning dive for it and was hampered in the remainder of the struggle by his role as protector of the spirits. Gillette scrambled on top of the chest, balancing folded under the low ceiling, and narrowly escaped setting the cabin on fire as he fed the scraps of paper, one at a time, to the lantern while Groves struggled to wrest them back.   
  
When the objects of contention were reduced to floating ash, the combatants settled back, slightly breathless, to their respective sides of the cabin. Groves glared at Gillette and received a merry grin for his pains.  
  
“I ought to call you out for that, you unprincipled dog,” Groves growled although there was a hint of a smile in his voice. “A man of honour always pays his gaming debts.”  
  
“You,” Gillette advised, straightening his wig that had gone badly askew in the melee, “are not the only man of honour on this ship. A fine friend I’d be to take advantage of you when you’re being a perfect mooncalf. Now hand over that bottle. I have worked up a thirst.”   
  
Groves surrendered the bottle under the condition that Gillette fill his mug as well.   
  
However, the game was brought to until they could recover the scattered cards. At first the two of them attempted to hunt for the elusive creatures, but after several collisions resulting in near concussions, Groves returned to his berth and let Gillette finish ferreting out the last of the thirty-six strays.  
  
Their next few games, Groves played much more at his usual level of skill, Gillette noted with satisfaction even as, out loud, he bemoaned the alteration in his luck.   
  
Since it was obvious that Gillette would refuse to accept Groves’ money, the two lieutenants altered the stakes from filthy lucre to irritating and tedious chores. Gillette was soon committed to darning Groves’ stockings and brushing his coat for a month. Groves had acquired the responsibility for attending to several hours of the first lieutenant’s paperwork. His next loss earned him the chore of laundering and pressing Gillette’s neck cloths when next that task came due. “Because that boy of mine will forever and always be woolgathering, and then he mildews or burns or creases them!” Gillette complained bitterly. And the ultimate bad luck brought him the task of corresponding with Gillette’s elderly, sanctimonious aunt. “You’ll be far better at ingratiating me with the old harridan than I ever was,” Gillette informed Groves with an evil smirk. “If she doesn’t cut me out of her will, I may even buy you a drink.”  
  
It was Groves who brought the subject back to the events of the morrow. “Have you ever served on a ship where an officer was flogged?” he asked diffidently, concentrating on his cards so that all Gillette could see was the top of his head.  
  
Of course. Flogging was for the scum of the service, for defiant men whose only purpose was to shirk their duty and overturn decency and order on board. When all moderate attempts at governance failed, the cat o’ nine had its place in controlling the outcasts of the shore who were little removed from criminals, the sweepings of the jails and streets, the inevitable knot of abandoned and incorrigible vagabonds who herded with the vicious portion of the seamen forming turbulent and unruly gangs. In plain speaking, one flogged the men before the mast. One did not flog the cream of the service, the officers of the quarterdeck. And yet there were rare occasions . . .  
  
“In fact, I have,” Gillette was able to say. “When I was a midshipman on this very ship. And the officer was our own Commodore Norrington when he was first lieutenant.”  
  
Astonished, Groves asked, “How ever did that happen?”  
  
Gillette was silent for a moment, looking inward, remembering. There was so much about that time in his life he would rather have forgotten. Finally, he began. “That story is going to require me to be retroactively insubordinate. Captain of the _Dauntless_ back then was a bloody rat bastard. Something wrong with a ship of the line with more of her own crew’s blood on her decks during peace than war. He’d flog for the slightest excuse, and the number of lashes far beyond reason or sense. I saw men die at the grating . . .” His voice fell away.  
  
Groves remained motionless, listening for something Gillette did not know how to say.  
  
“God, it was awful,” Gillette continued, “And then poor James arrived on board, all starry-eyed about service to God and country, and ran into that like a thoroughbred into a brick wall. Well, you know James. He broke his heart trying to make the _Dauntless_ so perfect that even her hellborn captain couldn’t find an excuse to beat the men to a pulp. But it was a hopeless, thankless job for the crew hated that captain and would not pull for him no matter what James did.”   
  
Again Groves waited patiently for Gillette to drag out the terrible memories.  
  
“Then the captain went too far,” Gillette said, stone-faced, carving the story down to its thin bone. “He set a good man out to starve to death for sleeping on watch, and paid no mind to the increasingly mutinous rumblings in the belly of his ship. James, who was never insubordinate, eventually couldn’t stand it and tried to remonstrate with the captain. For his pains, he was sentenced to a flogging. So now you know how I came to see an officer go under the cat.”  
  
“Did it affect his ability to lead the men?” Groves asked quietly. “Did it take him long to regain their respect?”  
  
Gillette felt his heart creak. That gentle Theodore should be agonizing over such questions—it was abominable.   
  
Fortunately, he could be reassuring and honest at the same time. “I think it actually made him a better leader,” he said. “The crew stood down from mutiny at the sight of his bloody shirt. Seems they felt he was on their side. You know how it is. Whatever hardcases he starts with on this ship, by the time he’s done with them the men would die for him.”  
  
He was happy to note that Theodore looked somewhat comforted.  
  
“That explains two things I’ve wondered about.” Groves interrupted the silence thoughtfully.  
  
Gillette raised inquiring eyebrows.  
  
“Why the commodore will exhaust every other alternative before ordering out the cat,” Groves answered, “and why we never see him with his shirt off.”  
  
“Glad to have solved your puzzle.” Gillette smiled. “Don’t worry, Theo. You were born knowing what that flogging taught James. The men already do better on your watch than on anyone else’s. They don’t want to let you down. You won’t gain anything tomorrow but more of their respect.”  
  
Since Groves seemed willing to talk, Gillette dared to ask the question that had been gnawing at the back of his mind. “Do you really think this mad start of yours will make a difference in the behaviour of that imp of Satan? Won’t he just congratulate himself on having gotten away with attempted murder and go on to worse infamies the minute he has a chance?”  
  
“Oh, it will make all the difference. Of that, at least, I am certain,” said Groves. “He has already insisted that he would rather be shot. His damage to us up to this point has been largely theoretical, intended to help Jack Sparrow more than to harm the crew of the _Dauntless_.”  
  
Gillette opened his mouth to object, but Groves waved him silent.  
  
“I know,” he admitted, “if the _Black Pearl_ or another vessel had fired on us, that theoretical harm would have become intensely real, but Jip insists that he knew Sparrow would not shoot first. We may deplore his naivety and inexperience, but I do not think we can question the integrity of his intentions.”  
  
“So,” said Gillette. “He will be forced to watch the consequences of his actions actually causing harm, and you feel that will deter him?”  
  
“He will stand by the doctor where he must perforce witness. Yes,” said Groves. “And Samuels suggests he be required to assist in the application of the vinegar and salt . . .” his voice trailed off.  
  
“Bloody hell, Theo!” Gillette exclaimed, appalled at the picture, reaching out to grip his friend’s hand. “I know that’s to prevent infection, but good God! . . . . If I were a quarter the man you are, I’d do this thing in your place myself!”  
  
Gillette half rose, ready to light off to inform the commodore of this substitution immediately, but Groves’ hand stayed him.  
  
“No, Andrew. I thank you, but I believe I am the only one who can do this.” His gesture insisted that Gillette be seated again. “Jip and I have an understanding of sorts, perhaps the beginnings of a friendship, and it is much easier to bear the hurts of a stranger than those of a friend.”  
  
“Infinitely easier,” said Gillette grimly, not letting go of Groves’ hand. “You selfish bastard, making all your friends suffer so.” And he reflected that Groves was one of those rare beings who also found the hurts of strangers unbearable.  
  
Groves returned the grip before withdrawing his hand and retiring into what Gillette always called his officerial shell. “In the end, it is only what a great many men have endured, and some much worse. Perhaps, after my first acquaintance with the cat, I shall become a hardened, devil-may-care sort of chap and court the lash without dismay.”  
  
“Don’t you dare become anything other than what you are at this moment,” Gillette admonished him. “The man with the softest heart and the softest head on this ship.”  
  
Groves eyed him quizzically. “I am trying to decide whether that is a compliment.”  
  
“Of course it is not a compliment,” Gillette informed Groves with a mischievous quirk to the corner of his mouth. “Nevertheless, it is what we value about you, so you are not allowed to alter.”  
  
“Now,” Gillette continued, dealing the cards, “I have a strong inclination to see you blacking my shoes, so name your stakes and make your discards!”  
  
The game continued quietly, the luck running evenly for a while; however, by four bells of the first watch, Gillette was steadily gaining on Groves who had sacrificed caution to recklessly pursuing the highest prize.   
  
“Nervous?” Gillette asked when Groves’ miscalculation once again lost him what should have been a certain capotte.  
  
“Is one permitted to admit such a thing?” Groves asked with a crooked grin.  
  
“I should think so!” said Gillette emphatically. “Here, have another drink.” He held out the bottle invitingly.  
  
“I don’t know if it counts as courage if you get it from a bottle,” Groves mused, eyeing his mug with skepticism.  
  
“It’s never really courage,” Gillette said, tilting the bottle and filling the mug. “It’s just getting the job done, no matter how you feel.”  
  
Groves shook his head. “I don’t know whether I would rather drive the hours before me four-in-hand just to have this business over with or rein them in so hard they tip time’s winged chariot in the ditch in the hope that morning never dawns.”  
  
“Whichever it is, I am certainly at your disposal,” Gillette said, waving the pack of cards invitingly.  
  
“It’s ungodly late, Andrew. Shouldn’t you be turning in?” Groves asked.  
  
“What about you? Do you plan on getting any sleep?” Gillette scrutinized him suspiciously.  
  
“Perhaps.” Groves shrugged, not meeting his friend’s eyes.  
  
“That’s what I thought.” Gillette settled back on the chest and began to deal the cards.  
  
“Thank you,” Groves said quietly.  
  
Gillette shook his head, dismissing the gratitude. “You have nothing more to gamble, my friend. Next hand, you owe me your firstborn.”  
  
* * * * *  
  
TBC


End file.
